


The Diamond Key Book II

by chains_archivist



Series: Diamond Key by Ariana [2]
Category: Gundam Wing, The Key Game (Unofficial)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Boys in Chains, Fluff, Key Game, Lemon, M/M, Out of Character, Sappy, Slaves, Yaoi, strange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:42:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3707657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chains_archivist/pseuds/chains_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>by Ariana</p><p>Heero is taken prisoner by Oz and forced to become a pleasure slave, a 'key' in a trap set by Treize to capture the other Gundam pilots. Duo and Wufei infiltrate the Palace, but discover that there is far more at stake than just rescuing their friend.<br/>Warnings: Uh...Lemon, angst, yaoi, sap, fluff, strange, OOC, AU...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Dusk, the archivist: this work was originally archived at [Boys in Chains](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Boys_in_Chains), which opened in 2000 as a multifandom archive for both fiction and art, but then sadly went offline in 2005. To bring the archive back, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2014. Open Doors [posted an announcement](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/1832) and e-mailed all creators about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please [contact the Open Doors committee](http://transformativeworks.org/contact/open%20doors).

_His face! His face..._  
  
It was terrible. It was something out of a nightmare. Dominic's eyes were gone, leaving empty, bleeding sockets in their places, and there were long red scratched down his cheeks. The man's entire face was black, as if he were slowly rotting away, and when he talked, a long black forked tongue darted out, bringing several insects out with it, and back in with a crunch. Large horns sprouted on the top of his head, coming to a deadly point, glittering in the faint light.   
  
Duo felt his throat close up just as a scream threatened to tear out. Instead, he leaned down and frantically shook Heero. he whispered, feeling tears stinging in the corners of his eyes.   
  
Duo's head shot up as he felt Dominic speak directly into his mind. He looked up and saw He felt impatience beginning to fray at the edges of his common sense and snapped angrily at Dominic.   
  
He curled an arm around Heero's chest, eyes blazing with hatred.   
  
Dominic replied.   
  
Duo's face was wary, but he felt Heero stir in his arms and pushed aside his own fears.   
  
Dominic sighed, scatching his forehead.   
  
Duo stared hard at Heero's face. A slender white finger traced Heero's cheekbones, imploring. To his own horror and shame, he found tears running clear rivers down his own cheeks.   
  
Then Duo felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and he too went spiraling down into darkness.   
  
==============================================   
  
 _He felt her as she screamed, her last coherent thought of a young angel with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. "Heero..." The young Key traced his own mirror image delicately with his finger, frowning at his short blonde hair. "You shouldn't have cut it. It doesn't become you." he reminded himself.  
  
His hand slipped down to his waist, and then to his back, where his own wings sprouted. "Treize," he breathed softly, resting his head on the cold mirror, breathing small white clouds over the sheer surface. He had given everything for the man...His youth. His body. His innocence.   
  
His humanity.   
  
He shivered as his shirt burst into a thousand scraps of white cloth, white feathers unfolding and stretching, out of use for so long.   
  
Perhaps he had laid low too long. Perhaps if he had been stronger, if he had not been afraid, Yalith would still be alive. How could they finish without her? She was the link, the passage between the Palazzio and Darius...   
  
Yet if he had not stayed hidden, he would never have gotten so close to the Pilot of Wing Zero. He could still feel those burning eyes, the frightened innocent inside of him baulking at the feelings rising inside.   
  
"How funny," he murmured as his hair began to grow, first to shoulder length, then down to his waist, until he had a platinum blonde waterfall of hair cascading down his back, covering his nakedness, "that I have discarded one mask for another."   
  
He glanced into the mirror once more, and instead of Ashura's innocent, if precocious, face staring back at him, there was Zechs Marquise. Infamous soldier of OZ, former lover of Treize Khushrenada. Once a killer, always a killer.   
  
He had thought...   
  
A new life. A chance to start over, without the Peacecraft family herding him into a life not of his choosing. And he had seen how that had turned out. L2, destroyed. He had been on vacation from the Academy and taken fever. He could still hear the woman's kind voice, filling in the gaping holes of his memory, filling in the places where he should have remembered a mother's kind touch. She had given birth to the real Zechs Marquise.   
  
Treize had played him like a pawn. No more.   
  
He stalked from his room, slamming the door so hard that the mirror and every other piece of glass in the room shattered. _  
  
=================================================   
  
"Meiran?" the girl asked. "I don't know any Meiran. Is she another one of the servants, perhaps? My name is Aiyisha." She then did a little curtsy, mouth curving into a rich smile. He heard a snort from Treize's vicinity, but ignored it.   
  
Wufei stared for another moment, mouth working, then shook his head. "I apologize," he said stiffly. "Is there something you wanted?"   
  
"Yes...Dominic requests both your presences in the Black Hall. Now." She motioned for them to follow her. "Hurry, he'll become angry if we are late."   
  
Wufei looked curiously at Treize, who for some reason, refused to even meet his eyes. he vowed, and ran his fingers through his loose hair absently. "Are you ready, Treize?" he asked sweetly, doing a little bow of his own. The look on the general's face was almost worth it...   
  
"Of course I am," Treize replied, and saluted smartly, spinning on one heel as he turned the corner, following Aiyisha down the stone corridor. The girl led them down several stairwells, deeper and deeper into the heart of the Palazzio, occasionally pausing to examine a stone or the way a torch was hung, as if it held the instructions to the place they were going.   
  
Finally, they stopped at a large stone wall beneath an arch. She waved her hand twice, and the stone wall abruptly lifted into the larger wall encasing it. "They're here, Master," she announced, curtsying again, then moving to stand by a tall figure adorned in gray silk.   
  
"Good," he said, petting her absently. "Prepare Duo and Heero." It was then that he saw Heero, lying unconscious on the floor, naked as the day he was born, legs spread, on top of Duo, who was also naked. Even in sleep, they held hands, clutching to each other as if against the tide.   
  
She nodded, scooping up the boys in her arms, and walking out through some secret exit. Then Dominic turned towards them, eyes shooting dagger straight into his defenses. This man was powerful, Wufei realized. And not just physical power. He exuded confidence, strength, and something else. Something he felt when he was around Heero a lot; power untapped, perhaps? Something resting just beneath the surface, dormant and waiting...   
  
"Good, Treize. You've done well." Wufei's eyes narrowed; Treize was working for this man?   
  
"What's he talking about?" he demanded, looking alternately at a very guilty sandy-haired general and a smirking man who pulled a rose out of thin air and sniffed deeply.   
  
"He's talking about you," a female voice said. He turned around yet again, only to find a shapely blonde emerge from the shadows. She wore a see-through white dress and two gold bracelets, though the plainess only accentuated her natural beauty. She was pretty in a very cold and impersonal way.   
  
"Sir, the Gundam pilots are effectively divided. Shall we send out troops to Siberia?" The blonde's voice was like stone and as yielding. "Unfortunately for Darius, the ones he captured are the lesser of the five pilots in terms of sheer fighting ability. We should be able to overwhelm them and recapture the Keys."   
  
"No..." Dominic considered for a few moments, then shook his head. "No. We let them come here, bring them in close, and then we crush them with one swift blow. It is the way we have always done things."   
  
The girl nodded and melted away into the shadows, literally. Wufei stared at the place where she had been, but there was nothing, only cold air and stone.   
  
A voice startled him from his private thoughts. "I have a proposition for you, Chang Wufei." He motioned to Treize, who stepped forward, still looking away. "The girl you just met..."   
  
"Aiyisha." Wufei was not amused. Was it some kind of sick joke of Treize's, sending a servant that looked exactly like his dead wife? The Chinese pilot had waxed poetic on her beauty many a drunken night.   
  
"What would you do if I told you that Aiyisha was Meiran?"   
  
==================================================   
  
 _Duo was dreaming._  
  
Water and fire.   
  
Burned with fire, unlocked with water. He could see Yalith as she approached with the brand, mouth moving minutely, just enough to utter words. An incantation, he realized. Burned. Branded.   
  
He watched as Heero slid into the water. Unlocked. Unwoven.   
  
The scene switched and he saw Ashura, mouth working over Heero's body, healing him. Water. Unlocked with water.   
  
Deathscythe in the hangar, green eyes glowing. Burned with fire. *Bound* with fire. Wing Zero, too. All burned, all bound.   
  
Fire binds. Water unlocks.   
  
Water unlocks...   
  
Water Unlocks.   
  
Duo woke up.   
  
===============================================   
  
Quatre knew instinctively that something was wrong.   
  
Darius paced restlessly in his office. From his own window, Quatre could see the young man walking back and forth, hands behind his back, head bowed as he thought. He could also make out the slender figure of Armand, following Darius, trying to calm him down.   
  
Something was wrong.   
  
The door burst open, and Pierce stuck his head in, eyes blazing. "You've been down a long time. Still know how to pilot one of these damned machines?"   
  
"I think we do. Trowa?" The green-eyed boy nodded silently, moving forward in synch with Quatre's own steps. They followed Pierce down the hallway, and were led to the hangar.   
  
It had been too long, and yet not long enough. The war still raged, and yet here he was, fighting a cause not his own, for people he'd barely known for a year, and all the while something inside of him was begging him to stop, to turn around and run back to his safe little mansion and his horde of motherly sisters.   
  
He felt Trowa's hand on his shoulders, and smiled, knowing even as he did that some part of Trowa was smiling too.   
  
And he spoke his famous last words, feeling somehow, that they should have been spoken under entirely different circumstances. Somewhere else, far away, fighting a different battle.   
  
"To outer space, then." He nodded at a group of passing soldiers, making them all jump. "Everyone of us."   
  
Nodding in approval at his choice of words, Darius watched from the shadows. It was good that they were gone; Pierce had said that the blonde one could sense the other Gundam pilots' pain. None of them had changed to their true forms in the days since Quatre had arrived.   
  
Feeling his back trembling, he sighed and his body sagged, wings slicing his uniform to pieces, a few white feathers fluttering to the ground.   
  
====================================   
  
"You lie," Wufei snarled, dropping into a defensive crouch.   
  
Dominic laughed. "I do not lie! Ask your lover, Chang. Ask Treize if Aiyisha is your wife." Wufei turned to Treize, eyes questioning. He had his answer when the older man turned away, as if burned.   
  
"How?" His voice was nothing more than a faint whisper.   
  
"I found her, catatonic on your homeworld. I had been...searching for some stolen possessions of mine when the assault occurred. She was the only one left, and badly hurt to boot." He smiled faintly at the memory. "She doesn't remember anything."   
  
Wufei stared at his hands. "What do you want from me?"   
  
"Your word. That you will not try to stop me. That you will not help Heero or Duo escape. Other than that, you are free to go. If you break your word Meiran will die a thousand deaths, each more painful than the last." With that, Dominic disappeared.   
  
"You lied to me."   
  
Wufei's voice was hollow with tears as he began to scream. "You LIED to me! I--hate--you," he choked out. "Now I want the truth, Treize. The fucking truth." His slender frame was shaken with tiny sobs as he sank slowly to his knees.   
  
The sandy-haired man made no move to comfort his dragon. What could he say that had not already been said?   
  
*The fucking truth.*   
  
Very well. The fucking truth it was. He began to speak.   
  


 


	2. Chapter 2

  
When Darius came back from his tryst with Armand, he was on cloud nine. Everything seemed perfect. If only he weren't a Key. If only he didn't have a Master. Then they could run away together and live somewhere where flowers grew year round and the baby birds never fell from their nests.   
  
He shivered as a firm hand clamped onto his arm, tossing him easily onto the bed without letting go of his wrist. Darius screamed as his shoulder was dislocated and blinding pain rocked through him, even as his Master spread his legs, thrusting deeply inside with his dry cock. He let out a yelp of pain as he tore and blood seeped down bare thighs.

"Stop," he choked out through his tears. "Please, stop..."   
  
When Treize was done, he rolled over and went to sleep, expecting his Key to cry himself to sleep as he always did. Instead, a plan formed in Darius' head. A very stupid plan, but he was desperate the way murderers are often desperate. He could not let Armand see him like this, could not let the other Keys know. He would be considered weak.   
  
He reached beneath his pillow, feeling around for the knife, and frowned as his hands only met soft bedding. A harsh chuckle filtered in through his angry haze, and it was then that he realized there was a knife raised over his body, stabbing him quickly in a rapid, patternless staccato. Blood rose in his throat, spilling over into his mouth.

He was going to die.   
  
"Armand..." He would never see his face again, never notice the way the light seemed to spill over his head in a golden crown, never feel the touch of his lips or his hands.   
  
It could not be. Darius could not accept it. With the last vestiges of strength he possessed, he grabbed the knife, the sharp edges slicing through his palms, and forced it back towards his Master, biting his Master's hand to the bone. Crying out in pain, he dropped the knife, allowing Darius to take control of it.   
  
He didn't stop until his Master was dead.   
  
And even then, he hadn't done a thorough enough job.   
  
Treize woke on a wooden altar, surrounded by flowers, the light aroma of spice and cinnamon in the air. He finally forced his eyes open, and screamed at the sight presented to him.   
  
Everywhere he looked, mirrors stared back at him. His face, as badly burned as the rest of his body, looked like a strange mix between the creature from the black lagoon and steak kabobs. No matter where he looked, or how long he closed his eyes, that image was still there, still blinking back at him, the only thing not smoky and charcoaled his sapphire eyes.   
  
Treize had never considered himself a vain man. A few scars here, a burn from an overheated reactor or fried mobile suit network. Such were the battle scars and as such, badges, of his way of life.   
  
Yet as he looked upon himself, at the disfigured creature hunched over and stiff, blood oozing from some of the cuts on his legs, he began to scream. His face...that face...it followed him everywhere.   
  
Even over the edge and into madness. That soft whiteness, pure emotion, reds and greens tumbling along a planaformed landscape, inviting him to join it. Become *it*, lose himself in the pureness.   
  
And then he heard a voice.   
  
And it told him things. Things about his life, about his future. He would be general of OZ. He would fight in battles, he would win battles. And he would lose wars.   
  
It told him things, and it offered him a way out. To become like it, a part of the world and greater than the world, yet something outside reason, outside mathematical equations and rationale. There was nothing he would find impossible.   
  
He accepted, and found himself, lying in his bedroom in a puddle of blood, his and someone else's, his head pounding and his heart...   
  
He had no pulse.  
  
He was dead.   
  
Almost as if to spite him, as soon as his fingers touched his wrist, a steady beat thrummed there. Strange; he hadn't had a pulse until he had noticed it was missing. He searched his memory for a name, and, lips forming the words slowly, like a child reader their first primer, spoke.   
  
"Trei-ze. Khu--khush--re-na-da."   
  
====================================   
  
The journey to the Palazzio was brief, if tense. With every beat of his heart, he could feel a corresponding pulse from each of the Gundam pilots, creating a pounding rhythm in his ears that he had to fight to suppress. Heero's had blinked out, as if he had died, then came back, stronger than ever. Heero Yuy, indestructible soldier. It figured. The closer they got to the Palazzio, to Heero, Duo, and Wufei, the more uneasy Quatre became. The entire mission had been too planned, too precise. Like they were inviting them to just waltz inside and escape with little or no resistance.   
  
Closing his eyes, Quatre shut off all of his connections to the other pilots and released the controls. Now he was seeing with his uchuu no kokoro, not his fallible, human eyes. As he watched, tiny blue lights all over the world flickered and went out, reappearing in some places, disappearing in others, freed from the cycle of birth and rebirth. Their dance was so chaotic, but so ordered. In perfect harmony, always shifting towards a gap, filling a hole. And there was a very large hole hovering *over* Antarctica. Not actually touching the earth, not a part of the physical plane. But over.   
  
Could that be...?   
  
He heard a blip that told him it was time to land, and opened his eyes, only to find himself staring into the heart of space.  
  
=================================  
  
Heero moaned as he woke, head lolling against his chest. He could hear someone whispering frantically to him, and he could feel something rubbing against his leg...   
  
"...Heero!" Duo. Duo was in trouble. He took a deep breath, and forced himself into consciousness, immediately wishing that he hadn't. Rats. Rats everywhere, crawling over his legs and his feet, nibbling on the tender flesh, their red eyes glowing. They were hanging, suspended over a large pit filled with the squeaking creatures, probably designed to keep them motionless. If they moved, the ropes would rub against the boards supporting their weight and they would fall into the rat pit.   
  
Heero couldn't stop a tremor from running its ice cold finger down his back, but his own fears were pushed aside as he saw Duo, hissing and wailing as the rats clung to him. His poor lover was hysterical, throat raw from screaming, his voice only a whisper to the noises the rats were making.   
  
"Heero!" he whispered, eyes wide with horror, unseeing. "Heero! They're *on* me, Heero, get them off, get them off, GET THEM OFF!!!!" he screamed, throwing back his head as he let out a cry of pain and fear that shook the Japanese Key to the core.   
  
"Duo!" He tried to adjust his shackles so he could turn towards Duo, but stopped as he heard a board above creak. "Duo, I'm here. Duo--" "They're going to eat me!" he declared, shaking his head, lower lip trembling. "Heero, Heero, please HELP ME!" He screamed again, letting out a cry as a rat sank its fangs into his leg, blood dripping down to pool in the little curve of his ankle. He began to writhe, the rope tying his wrists together slowly beginning to snap, coil by coil. "Duo!" Heero screamed, seeing the fine line his lover walked. "Duo, listen to me. Duo!" The American pilot looked over at him, mouth fixed in a trembling line.   
  
"They ate him, Heero," he whispered in a hollow voice. "And now they're going to eat me."  
  
"No, Duo, close your eyes! Don't look, Duo!" The pilot Deathscythe, too terrified to do anything but follow instructions, slid his violet eyes shut. "You're safe, Duo. You're in a bed--"  
  
"With you?" Duo's voice cracked painfully; it struck Heero to the core to see him reduced to such a mindless state.  
  
"With me," Heero affirmed. "And there's just us, just the two of in bed--"  
  
"NOOOO!" Duo screamed, arching his back violently. "THEY'RE ON MEEEE!!! GET--THEM--OFF!!!" With that final tug, the rope snapped, and Duo was falling, falling into the waiting darkness below. Heero watched in stunned disbelief, wings beating desperately, trying to free himself.  
  
"Duo..."   
  
=====================================  
  
He saw the braided boy falling, heard his screams even hidden within the stone crevice. For a moment, he was sorely tempted to simply let Duo fall, to let the rats devour his body. Then he could have Heero...

He looked over at his would-be-koi, and, seeing the look of despair etched onto his pretty face, took flight, wings stretching, tendons unused for years suddenly pulled taut with his own weight.  
  
Zechs swooped down and caught Duo in his arms, cradling the frightened pilot in his arms as he flew up to the ground level. Carefully depositing the American onto the ground, he flew back down for Heero, who had retreated inside himself in the face of Duo's impending death.   
  
"Duo," Zechs snapped, slapping the boy hard twice across his cheek. The crack, strangely unsatisfying to his ears, echoed throughout the pit. Eyes slightly glazed but slowly focusing, Duo came to with a jolt, feeling blindly around for Heero. Their dependence was amazing; taking a closer look, Zechs suddenly frowned. She had bound them. The fucking bitched had Bound Heero to a mortal! Although it seemed Dominic had already made some...adjustments... Duo cooed softly to Heero, wrapping bloody arms around his body, rocking him gently.  
  
"Come back to me," he whispered, pressing a light kiss to Heero's forehead. The Japanese pilot stirred in his arms, dark blue eyes fluttering open as if it were the first time he had ever laid eyes on the world. "I love you," Duo choked out, burying his face in Heero's hair. Two warm arms slid around his waist, and they sat there, hearts pounding and unwilling to slow down. They had always eluded death before; why should now be any different?  
  
Those were humans you were fighting with, Duo reminded himself. Meanwhile, Zechs paced restlessly back and forth, hands clasped behind his back.   
  
"That wasn't part of the deal," he muttered angrily.   
  
"When you double cross someone, it is easy to get double- crossed yourself," a voice rang out, almost a hiss. Zechs whirled around, eyes rapidly darkening to a shade of black that was almost absolute in its absence of light.   
  
"I don't know what you're talking about," the blonde man replied flatly, his wings folding and unfolding in distress. He made a great show of smoothing back his hair, the whole time obviously avoiding Dominic's eyes.  
  
"You know exactly what I'm talking about. I thought you were on our side, Zechs," Dominic said, his tone a bit hurt. Then he grinned. "What a storm," he sighed, nodding towards the ceiling. As if on cue, lightning, so bright its radiance could be soon through the hardest granite, flashed across the blackest skies.  
  
"So. You've avoided death this far, Heero. Duo." He nodded his dark head towards them, as if in approval. "Perhaps you aren't as weak as I thought you were, Maxwell. It must have taken great courage to Bind yourself to Heero."  
  
"What?" Duo glared at the older man, oblivious to the fact that the light was slowly draining away from the room, being sucked into some black hole unknown to them. "What the hell are you talking about?"  
  
"You didn't know?" He laughed harshly, the darkness slowly swirling around him, running over his skin, into his mouth. "So Yalith did it. She was never 'straight with you', as you children say it nowadays. Did she tell you that angels never die, Duo? Did she tell you that?!" His voice cracked on the last word. Duo stared, gaze fixed on the shrieking man's face, as his sockets grew more pronounced and his eyes began to fade away to nothing.   
  
"Did she tell you that gods never die? Did she lie to you, Maxwell?" Another hysterical laugh. Duo felt a hand tugging his, and saw Heero, slowly backing away as Dominic ranted. "Yalith lies. Gods can die, Duo. I've killed a god. I KILLED GOD!" he roared, just as thunder boomed, shaking the entire Palazzio. Small pieces of stone began to fall from the ceiling, raining dust down on the four men.  
  
"I killed him," he whispered, slowly sinking to his knees. "I killed God. I killed my father. He was my father, Duo, and I killed him." As they all watched, horrified, a single hole opened in each of his hands, bleeding crimson all over the ground, sizzling as it met with the dirt.  
  
"Oh my..." Somehow, it seemed blasphemous to invoke the name of God, when they had been so blatantly forsaken. Gripping Heero's hand in a hold of steel, he suddenly yanked hard, sending them both running out of the pit, towards the door. Was it *shrinking*? It was!   
  
"Heero, hurry up," he urged, pulling the Japanese pilot with him. "We're almost there!"   
  
He heard laughter behind him.  
  
"You can't escape a GOD, Duo. I can see you when you sleep. I can hear you when you pray. I'm in your dreams, and your nightmares, when you cry and when you fuck your little Japanese lover. Does he cry, like you used to?" Shaking his head, Dominic turned his attention back to the remaining Gundam pilot that was trembling before him. Only another step, and they were home free.   
  
The American pilot could almost taste the sweetness of the air on the other side. With a grunt, he threw himself through the hole, gasping as the darkness raked over his side, tearing flesh and breaking bone, but they were through, gasping for breath, trembling, but alive.  
  
It was only then that he remembered.  
  
"Zechs..." He shook Heero's shoulder frantically. "Heero!"  
  
"What, Duo?" Heero asked sleepily, rubbing his bright blue eyes.   
  
"No time to sleep now, love. Zechs is still inside, and--" They both watched with a mixture of relief and horror as the doorway between the pit and the heart of the Palazzio closed.  
  
====================================  
  
"They've all abandoned you, Zechs. I'll take care of them later." Pulling a rose from thin air, his face melted into that of a certain ginger-haired general of OZ. "Zechs! What punishment befits that of a traitor?"  
  
"I was never on your side," Zechs growled. "I never will be, either. You might as well just kill me."  
  
"Kill you?" Treize/Dominic raised a single eyebrow. "Ah well," he sighed. "If that's what you truly want." Before Zechs even had a chance to react, Dominic, reverting to his first form, hurled a dagger of white light straight through the blonde man. He watched with an impassive smile as blood began to rise in his mouth, dripping down his chin, and then the young man slumped over, dead, his wings shriveling into dust.   
  
"My pretties," he murmured softly, reaching down to pet one of the rats. It arched into his caress, cold wet nose nuzzling his palm like a cat. "Enjoy." With that, he kicked Zechs' body into the pit, breaking out into a high-pitched laugh as the frenzy of squeaking noises rose to a fevered pitch below.  
  
===========================================  
  
"We've got to get out of here," Duo said reasonably, though he looked as if he might start laughing uncontrollably at any moment. He let out a giggle as Heero's hand touched his shoulder. Nerves, most likely.  
  
"Back the way we came?" Heero suggested, pointing towards the stone door Yalith had led them through. It seemed like such a long time ago...  
  
"No," Duo said after a moment. "We're underneath the Palazzio, right? It would take us forever to climb back up, and I know that I wasn't paying attention when we came down the first time."  
  
Nodding slowly, Heero considered. "So how else are we supposed to get out?"  
  
"I'm not leaving without Wufei," Duo said stubbornly. "He's one of us, man! Besides, his sense of justice wouldn't let him leave any of us here, you know?" Heero had to admit, he did know what Duo was aiming at. Even if he didn't like it.   
  
"So we find Wufei?"   
  
"I'm right here."   
  
They both whirled around, eyes wide.  
  
=================================  
  
"So." Wufei examined Treize with new eyes. "What are you?"  
  
"Dragon," Treize murmured, nuzzling his ear. "You don't--"  
  
"I do," the Chinese boy snapped, pulling away from the older man quickly. "I want to know."  
  
"A quick lesson in philosophy, then," Treize suggested. "You have heard of theories that everything in the universe is made of one natural substance and this substance has been around since the beginning of time? An interesting proposal, but wrong, nonetheless. Well," he amended, "to a certain extent." A quick snort reminded him to stop trying to avoid the point.   
  
"In the beginning, there was no God. There was nothing. But from that nothing came something, and that is the greatest paradox of life, reflected in everything we do. From non-existence to life in a second, in a year, in a millenium. It doesn't matter. The point is that life embodies certain paradoxes, and this is one of them.  
  
"The other thing that I suppose you should know is that there was substance, if you like, that the entire universe was composed of, in one way or another. But, as you know one thing cannot be two opposites, one thing cannot hold the paradox of life. And so it split, into two forces.  
  
"Some people call it the yin and yang. For others, it is good and evil. For some, fire and water. I fear that Yalith...in her...haste, may have attempted to mold Heero into a template embodying water, which is most unfortunate." Treize sighed.   
  
"Why?"  
  
"Heero is...the perfect soldier. But he is also a kind and compassionate person, as far as I can tell, and these opposites war within him. They war within us all, but they are stronger with him. The split has...created a possibility for..." He paused. "Let me stop there, dragon. I do not wish to speak of certain things, for they may never come about either way.  
  
"You could say that I am of the same substance as Dominic. Dominic is a mystery. He may have been born centuries ago...or eons ago. He could be a liar. He could be a savior. I don't even try to understand his reasonings."  
  
Wufei sighed. "Back to Heero," he growled. "Template? As in...?"  
  
"As in the oldest battle known to man. The battle between good and evil, Heaven vs Hell. Of course, these were metaphors for what was going on at the time, but some of the Bible is correct, however archaic and badly translated it might be." He nodded towards the door. "Have you figured out what a Key really is?"  
  
Wufei paused. "Heero's a Key. You should have executed him when you captured him, but you brought him here instead. He's different. You said so yourself." His nose scrunched up in an endearing way, or so Treize thought. "Is that why? Are they 'templates'?"  
  
Treize chuckled. His dragon was intelligent indeed. "Close. They aren't templates--yet--but they have the possibility locked within them. Why do you think you are so adept at piloting a Gundam, Wufei? All the Gundam pilots are, if ever captured by OZ, slated to become Keys. It binds them. It makes them safe in the only way possible." His nose curled in disgust.  
  
"Unfortunately, a few Keys--well, not Keys anymore, templates, I suppose, though that is a rather crude way of describing them-- escaped, Darius among them. And now I fear that they seek to destroy the Palazzio, and the boundaries around it. Can you imagine, hundreds of men in the prime of youth, kept young by the time spells here, freed and loosed into the world?"  
  
"I'm still not convinced," Wufei began, when suddenly he heard a muffled voice.  
  
"So we find Wufei?"   
  
Where was it coming from? He heard a scuffle, and his head swiveled to the left. The wall! The Chinese boy hurried over to one of the eight sides of the room, missing the look of annoyance that quickly flashed over Khushrenada's face. Hollow! The wall was hollow. Feeling the cracks for a trigger point, his foot nudged a stone at the base of the wall, and suddenly, he found himself standing in front of two very naked Gundam pilots.  
  
"I'm right here," he said, raising an eyebrow. They both turned around at the exact same time, identical expressions of surprise painted onto their faces.  
  
"Wu-man?" Duo asked incredulously, moving forward tentatively. "Is that you?"  
  
"I'm not sure, Maxwell," Wufei replied seriously. "It all feels unreal to me."  
  
"Unreal or not, you'd better get a move on," Treize suggested, moving in from behind Wufei. Heero's lip immediately curled into a scowl. "What are you doing here?" Wufei saw Duo's hand drop to his waist out of habit, and involuntarily, his eyes strayed left to the light brown thatch of curly hair. Mentally slapping himself, he raised his eyes to find Heero watching him with a strange expression on his face.  
  
"Just watching out for Wufei," Khushrenada replied, removing his shirt as he spoke.   
  
"What are you doing?" Wufei demanded. Treize raised a single forked eyebrow and nodded towards Heero and Duo, who clung to each other, scowling defensively. He smirked as he handed his shirt to Duo, the taller of the two. Swearing about self-righteous pricks, the American pulled the plain cotton shirt over his head, grateful that it was long enough so it came to rest at midthigh. Blushing, Wufei yanked off his own silk shirt and tossed it at Heero, who took his time pulling it over his head.   
  
"Aren't you coming, Khushrenada?" he asked, feeling rather foolish for asking as Heero and Duo exchanged knowing glances. "We can't have any leaks," he added severely, but it was too late, the damage had been done.  
  
"I fear I must stay here and await my destiny apart from you," he replied softly, sapphire blue eyes staring straight at Wufei, making it more than obvious that the 'you' was singular. "One last kiss, dragon? I fear I may never see you again..."  
  
There was only a moment's hesitation before Wufei cried indignantly, "No!" The older man nodded sadly, as if he had expected it. Duo tugged on his Japanese lover's arm, and they moved to the other side of the room, as if giving them room to...  
  
"Ch'," he swore, a rotten habit he'd picked up from Yuy. "Fine." Showing him a delighted smile, Treize lowered his head gently, lips brushing lightly over Wufei's. He found himself leaning into the kiss, almost wanting to part his lips, let his tongue slide in.  
  
Had the world been a different one...   
  
"Time to go," Heero called. Wufei snorted, hiding his embarrassment behind his bravado, again.  
  
"Not yet, Yuy. I still--I still have to find someone..." He looked desperately at Treize, and he smiled. Trapped between duty and love, between the past and ensuring a future. Wasn't that how he had lived his entire life?  
  
"I'll watch out for her. You'll be back; all of you will." He nodded at the brown-haired Gundam pilots. Leaning closer to Wufei, breath tickling his ear, he whispered, "When you return, I want you to kill me. Even an angel can kill. Even a demon can die."   
  
With that, Treize stalked out of the room, melting into the shadows as many before had.  
  
================================================  
  
"So, where do we go from here?" Duo finally said after a long moment of silence. Almost like they were mourning for Treize.  
  
"We have to get out of here," Heero said, chewing absently on his lower lip. "How did you get in?"   
  
Wufei pointed wordlessly to a door on the other side of the room.   
  
"Same way as us," he sighed. "There's got to be another way..."  
  
No sooner had he spoken than a large metal foot belonging to Sandrock crashed through the roof, splitting level after level, coming a halt not five feet from them.  
  
"Jesus, Quatre!" Duo yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Cuttin' it a little close, aren't you?"  
  
There was a pause, and then, "DUO?!?" He saw the flash of golden hair before he saw the actual face, and then Quatre was walking out, standing on a platform as he called to the others. "Who else is down there?"   
  
"Wu-man and Hee-chan," Duo replied with a straight face.  
  
"DUO!"  
  
==================================  
  
Trowa had to fight back a smile as he watched the joyful reunion. Wufei and Heero were happy too, even if they weren't busy hugging each other and jumping up and down like children.   
  
"...and then we screwed like rabbits for a few hours, and then--"  
  
"DUO!"  
  
"Gomen, Hee-chan."  
  
He was glad that Heero and Duo had finally gotten together; or rather, that Heero had stopped being so blind to everyone around him. Soldier no more, he thought wryly.  
  
A loud crash of thunder reminded them all exactly where they were.   
  
"Let's get going," Quatre suggested. "You all could ride in the ammunitions storage."  
  
"How generous," Wufei snickered. "I'd rather--"  
  
"Stay here?" Heero suggested. The Chinese pilot blushed faintly, but shut up. "You guys came alone?"  
  
"No, we came with--it's a long story," Quatre sighed, catching Trowa's eye as he smiled. "Let's go, everyone!"  
  
A panel of Sandrock's leg slid away, to reveal a small pile of guns and some bullets. There was plenty of room for the three of them--if Duo didn't get hyper. Feeling terribly sorry for Wufei as the panel slid back again, he climbed back into his own Gundam and turned on the comm-link to Quatre's Gundam.   
  
"We ready?" he asked.   
  
"Darius is ordering a full retreat," Quatre marveled. "You'd think his plan was to get all the Gundam pilots together and then..." Intuition flooded his brain, and the blonde Arabian shook his head, blonde hair glimmering even inside the cockpit. "They're always using us, Trowa. When this is over..."  
  
"When this is over, it will be over and we will talk then," the green-eyed pilot said firmly. Quatre nodded, and began the ascent back to earth.  
  
=============================================  
  
And out of the darkness, a hand dug into soft dirt, clinging to the surface, white skin scratched and bloody, but alive. He was alive. A squeaking protest rose from below him at the loss of their supper. Zechs choked back a laugh.   
  
Alive.


	3. Chapter 3

There was no light where she was.   
  
How had it all gone wrong? She had been so close, poised on the brink of success, failure a distant figure looming on the horizon. Another hour and she would have had Heero Unlocked and the world would know the true meaning of the word decimation and the Palazzio. The evil within would be destroyed forever, the world rid of a virus that threatened to consume it.   
  
Betrayed by her own sister. It left a bitter taste in her mouth, sour like old grapes. Sandalith had not had that kind of power the last time she'd tested her. Which meant somehow, Dominic had enhanced her abilities. That was a mystery for another time, a question that, while perplexing, was not the issue at hand.   
  
Darius and the others faced certain failure if they fought without the five Gundam pilots; yet, there was no way they could succeed without Heero. There was a bright core inside of him that attracted everyone to him. It was a dangerous thing, to have people falling left and right at his suicidal and often reckless feet.   
  
And now Heero and Duo were out of the Palazzio, away from the one thing that could Unlock their powers, and it was all her fault. She should have seen it coming, should have felt the cold winds announcing the arrival of an inter-dimensional portal.   
  
Closing her eyes, she let her consciousness float, past the walls of the world she was trapped in, into the blonde boy's Gundam. Heero lay beneath Duo, one hand absently running up and down his long, silky braid. The action was simple, but obviously possessive. His lips were moving; he was speaking to Duo, or to their Chinese companion.   
  
'...Gundam was captured and destroyed,' he finished. Duo peeked at his lover through chestnut bangs, looking unhappy at the prospect of Heero fighting without his preferred Gundam.   
  
'We could rebuild,' he suggested. Then he turned towards Heero, obstructing her view of his lips. '...J's plans somewhere. I don't think he ate them,' he deadpanned, lips quirking slightly. Heero was forced to agree as the other boy kissed him deeply, preventing any more talk of resurrecting Wing Zero.   
  
Heero! she cried, but it was useless. The veil between worlds was too strong for any kind of weak interference to pass through. Yalith bit her lip, contemplating the only solution she could come up with. Was it worth it? They might not even understand the message...   
  
After a few moments, she shook her head and continued to watch.   
  
============================================   
  
They landed uneventfully, no block parties with banners welcoming the Gundam pilots. After the past few days, all any of them wanted to do was lie down and sleep for the rest of their lives. It seemed as if fate had thrown a lifetime's worth of revelations and epiphanies and packed them into four days.   
  
Duo headed to the former mess hall of the OZ base to think. Heero had gone to see Sarsis, who Quatre and Trowa declared was a healer, for reasons he refused to disclose to the curious American. Duo had finally relented, one eyebrow raised in suspicion, reminding himself to quiz the Japanese boy later.   
  
Think, he commanded himself, shutting the door carefully behind him. Think...   
  
He knew there was something important he was missing. Something that could change everything. He was sure of it; the Maxwell hunch never failed. It hadn't failed him when it told him that Heero Yuy, the boy pointing a gun at a seemingly defenseless girl, was going to end up as his lover and soulmate. Duo had fancied it the ends of a runaway imagination, but now he wasn't so sure. Recounting the times it had saved his ass in a battle, disbelief began to whittle into a semblance of faith.   
  
So he had some kind of sixth sense. So did Quatre. That...space heart...thing of his confused Duo to no end. For some reason, he had always attributed Quatre's knowledge of his little hurts and aches to the Arabian boy's own innate compassion and reason. But maybe that wasn't true. He paused for a moment, waiting to see if a roaring denial would surge from his gut. Nope. Nothing.   
  
That didn't mean it was reliable.   
  
Thinking as hard as he could, Duo screamed mentally, , then doubled over in pain as his insides cramped.   
  
Heero sounded mildly chagrined.   
  
he replied dutifully.   
  
Duo could almost see the little smirk on his lover's face. he chirped, blowing a mental kiss. His eyes widened in surprise as Heero caught and pressed it to his heart.   
  
Heero agreed, and then he disappeared. Not off the face of the earth, but out of Duo's range of 'hearing'. Even as he turned to collapse onto one of the long wooden tables for a nap, he couldn't help the heat that pooled in his belly, warming his whole body. Everything they'd been through: Heero getting wings, Yalith dying, barely escaping being crushed by Quatre, it was all worth it.   
  
Even the...rats were worth it. Because now he had Heero, and he wasn't going to let anyone else even look at him sideways. Duo had been through a lot in his short life. Waking every day on the streets of his homeworld to find rats nibbling at his fingers and feet, biting what flesh he'd been unable to tuck inside his coat. He would never forget returning to his gang's safehouse to bury Solo, only to find rats surrounding his body like...   
  
His dream. He'd had a dream. Duo could remember hanging above the pits, eyes suddenly snapping open, the dream still captured in the front of his mind, words perched on the tip of his tongue, about to spill over. And then he had seen the rats, and the dream had scurried away, frightened by his sudden cry. It was infuriating to him that he was unable to remember exactly what had happened. The only thing the American could recall were flames, hot and red, wavering uncertainly in the slight breeze.   
  
So something about flames. Duo laid his head down on the solid oak, marveling at the decadence of even the soldier's dining halls. He was beginning to trust his gut instinct; so far, it hadn't steered him wrong.   
  
The only problem was, what was it saying to him?   
  
And why did he feel as if they should never have left the Palazzio?   
  
============================================   
  
"They are lovers," Darius observed as he and Armand watched the long-haired boy and the smaller dark-headed boy enter the facility through the window of the office they had taken over. His lover snuggled against him, wings flapping gently behind him, eyes trained on the dark-haired one.   
  
"How can you tell?"   
  
"See the way his arm wraps around the smaller one's waist as soon as he sees Pierce, though he was content to let it rest at his side when he thought no one was watching? He is claiming him, in his own way." He chuckled darkly. "The dark-haired one you are watching so intently--is he Unlocked?"   
  
Armand paused, letting his senses flow outward, wrapping around both of the boys, and shakes his head. "Not yet, though he has his wings. I can't imagine why Yalith didn't Unlock him first and Bind him second. It was a fool thing to do. Now we have the lovely task of doing it for her."   
  
"Let the poor woman rest in peace," Darius murmured softly, stroking Armand's cheek with a determined hand. "She is dead and we are here. There is nothing we can do."   
  
"He will seek out Sarsis," Armand said softly. "He knows. He *must* know."   
  
"It doesn't matter whether he knows it or not. We have to Unlock him and then we can at last launch our attack." His eyes gleamed eagerly as a small tongue darted out to wet his chapped lips. "And we can destroy Dominic easily."   
  
"How are we to Unlock him?" Armand questioned suspiciously. "Yalith Unlocked all of us with an extensive ritual that none of us have the knowledge or the experience to replicate. There is no other way," he stated flatly.   
  
"That's not true. As it was done to me..." He leaned forward, whispering in Armand's ear, tongue occasionally tracing abstract symbols on his jaw.   
  
==========================================   
  
"I know exactly what your problem is," Sarsis said as soon as Heero had finished, his arms crossed across his chest protectively. "You haven't been Unlocked." Motioning for Heero to sit down and shrugging as he refused, the young healer went on.   
  
"There is a core center of being to everyone. Call it what you like. Your ki, your chi, whatever. It is what it is and no post-modernist labels can change it. It was brought to the surface when you switched bodies and it is locked inside of you, churning and causing trouble, and, every now and then, leaking out.   
  
"Your brain can't handle an influx of power like that, so parts of it shut down. Hence the blackouts, the dizziness and numbness. The only person that I knew who could shift the focus of your core, and who is currently, well, dead, is--"   
  
"Yalith," Heero said slowly. Sarsis nodded glumly. "So I'm fucked."   
  
"Well, yes." He could see no way around it and found no reason to deceive Heero. He rather liked him--Heero was like a younger Pierce, in a way. So jaded, and both so pure in their hearts.   
  
Unconsciously, Heero hugged one knee to his chest, a poor substitute for the braided American. Sarsis blushed as one lean thigh was suddenly put on display, the muscles flexing beneath skin that would probably feel like velvet...   
  
"Achem," a loud voice coughed from the doorway. "Am I interrupting?" It was Duo; and he looked rather annoyed at finding the now crimson healer ogling Heero. His every movement, every breath, every flicker of his eyelids screamed "MINE!".   
  
"I took a nice long nap and now I'm all better," Duo said, playfully tweaking Heero's nose. His eyes crossed for a split-second, then righted themselves with a faint look of amusement about them. Not very open, he noted. A former soldier.   
  
"That's good," Heero replied. Then he seemed to realize that it was actually *Duo* standing there and asked, "Duo, why are you here?"   
  
"Just missed you," he said casually, shooting daggers at Sarsis with his lovely violet eyes. "So what's wrong with Heero?"   
  
"Um..." He made a great show of adjusting his white tee-shirt, smoothing out the wrinkles. "Heero needs to be Unlocked."   
  
"Unlocked?" The American's nose wrinkled. "What's that mean?"   
  
"Unlocked. We've all got certain innate talents, but for the most part they stay hidden. Humans usually can't be Unlocked except under certain circumstances that are so rare they could qualify as miracles. Heero needs to be Unlocked soon."   
  
"Or else?" Duo made an impatient wiggling gesture with his fingers that grated on his nerves. He was lucky he was so cute, or else someone would have put a foot up his ass a long time ago.   
  
"Or else he'll die," Sarsis snapped, eyes widening as he realized he was close to losing his temper. Heero's face went stoically blank, as he'd known it would. Duo's features grew stolidly determined, disguising the wild fluctuation of emotion inside of him. His instability was making the room feel cramped, giving him a headache.   
  
"How can we Unlock him?" he questioned, peering closely at Heero like there was some tag attached to his neck with care instructions. Heero swatted at his attempts to pull off his shirt, instead catching Duo's wrists in his stronger hands.   
  
"We can't. And the only person we know who can is dead." Waves of guilt crashed down on him as the braided boy's features crumpled and his hands, wrenching from Heero's lax grip, flew to his face, muffling his cry. 


	4. Chapter 4

The instant Darius stepped into the cramped examining room, he knew he was too late. It occurred to Armand that Duo would take the possibility of losing his lover hard, and he should hurry to relieve them of the outdated theory. He had hurried down as much as he dared, not wanting to alert his mercenary soldiers. This batch of men he had hired could smell blood in the water a mile away.   
  
"Isn't this just a pity party?" he said unpleasantly as he stepped through the door. Pierce's lover turned and glared at him, and for a moment, Darius thought he might actually challenge him.   
  
"I need to borrow Heero for a few moments," he continued, rubbing his temples with gloved fingers in slow circles. "If that's all right with you." Duo stared at him blankly, mute.   
  
"Heero needs to--" Sarsis began, holding up a long, curved finger.   
  
"Heero needs to come with me," Darius said coolly. The two friends scowled at each other, in perfect understanding. "Now. Heero?" He turned expectantly towards the Japanese boy. It was practically an order, one that the soldier in him would be unable to refuse.   
  
Casting a dubious glance towards his lover and the healer, Heero nodded and slid from the table, pausing as Duo caught his hand in his, creating a massive knot of flesh and bony knuckles. "I'm coming too," he said firmly, jaw set in a hard uncompromising line.   
  
The skin around Darius' eyes tightened for a brief moment before he nodded sharply, motioning them both forwards with a mere flick of his wrist. Duo practically marched to the door, knees climbing higher with ever step, braid bouncing proudly against his back.   
  
He led them wordlessly into a maze of endless metal paneling and fluorescent lights. Down one flight of stairs and up another. Duo had the feeling that he was putting on a show for him, that he was unwanted and unappreciated. It didn't matter. His hand tightened around Heero's unconsciously, and, a bit startled, the Japanese boy gave him an uncertain smile. Almost like he wasn't sure that it belonged on his face.   
  
 _God_. The true beauty of a person lay not in their defined cheekbones or their full, collagen-enhanced lips. Every time he looked at his lover, he saw that tiny smile that he reserved only for him, only for Duo.   
  
One last door, and they found themselves standing on the roof of the abandoned OZ base. "We're here," Darius said in a flat voice, his eyes studying the gray cement. "I have a mission for you." At the word mission, Heero's head snapped up and his eyes hardened. "Duo, you don't know what I'm talking about, but Heero does. Do you remember the two pools?" Heero gave no outward sign of emotion, which was taken for a positive reaction.   
  
"Retrieve a flask of the water from the cold water pool, and return to the point at which you are dropped. You have two hours until the portal closes. After that, we'll have to come get you." he was obviously disgusted by even the idea of having to come save them *again*. "Are you ready?"   
  
Heero glanced at Duo, one heavy eyebrow quirked in question. "We are," he replied. Darius nodded absently, his eyes seeing the unseen, twisting the threads that surrounded them, bending them until-- He felt a sharp pain behind his eyes, and tried to clutch at his face, only to find that he had no face. He had no substance, only ethereal matter, the likes of which neither of the pilots could see.   
  
Darius looked down at his own body and swore. Bitch! The blonde-haired woman's aura surrounded and pervaded his physical form. She'd forced him out of his own body! He--she?-- wore a faint smirk, probably congratulating herself on a job well done. He'd always known that she would jump at the chance to bury the knife hilt-deep in his back.   
  
"Step through." Her voice was like steel, cutting through to them over the high winds.   
  
The portal was a giant, gaping black hole, bearing a frightening resemblence to the one Yalith had been pulled into. The American glared at Darius, who seemed to wear a slight smirk, challenging him to be the first to move. He started to step forward, then jumped as a searing pain tore through his insides. Wha--? Then he knew. A trap! How...base. Peering closer at the diminuitive commander, he grinned. "Nice try. I want to take our Gundams. Where's Deathscythe? And Wing Zero?" Seeing a shocked look cross over his face, his grin widened. "See? I knew you rebuilt Wing Zero, I just knew it!"   
  
"Who told you?" His voice was higher than usual; it seemed Duo was really making him angry. He shivered as a cold finger ran down his back, leaning instinctively towards the warmth Duo provided.   
  
"You did, with that silly look of yours. Come on, where are they?" He poked Darius in the chest, much to Heero's own dismay, grinning like a fool. "Which hangar? If you've got the coordinates of the Palazzio in the computer, we can go from there. Whaddaya say?"   
  
Darius made a strange grunting sound, and with a loud clap, the portal collapsed on itself. "West wing. I want you back in a day, then." With one lingering look at the two lovers, he departed, his booted feet clattering down the steel stairs.   
  
"You heard the man. The West wing it is," Duo said agreeably, all traces of viciousness dissolved from his sugary countenance. "I don't know what this flask of water crap is, but something's telling me that we can find out a lot more at the Palazzio than we can here. What a secretive bunch," he sighed, tapping a long finger against one heart-shaped cheek.   
  
"Aa," Heero said significantly.   
  
==========================================   
  
They landed half a mile from the Palazzio in a great lush jungle, with strange birds of all colors never imagined by man, bugs with eight eyes and no legs, flowers that threatened to bite their hands off if they strayed too close.   
  
Duo's bangs were sticking to his forehead from the humidity and his own sweat. "You're walking too fast," he complained, slapping at his neck as he felt a prick high in the crease of his jaw.   
  
Heero ground to halt and turned around, half-amused. "You're walking too slow, Duo." He cut his partner off with a finger on his lips, sensing the underlying tension of barely restrained rebellion. "Maybe it's my fault," he lamented. "I haven't been giving you any incentive." Before Duo could move, Heero pressed a soul-searing kiss to his lips, hands wandering all over his body, one pausing to undo his fly. Reaching into his boxers, his thumb rubbed slowly over the tip of his slowly hardening erection, sending jolts of pleasure through him. He reached up to wrap his arms around his neck--   
  
"HEY!"   
  
Duo began to whimper as Heero disengaged himself from his arms gently. "Gotta keep up, Duo." He would have sworn that he saw the beginnings of a Duo-type foolish grin spreading over his handsome face. To Duo's dismay, Heero began to walk again, leaving him behind to stare at his retreating form. "If you don't hurry up, I'm going to leave you like that."   
  
Needless to say, they made it to the Palazzio in record breaking time. A mere one hundred yards away from the front gate, where two very suspicious thugs were keeping watch for any strange figures, they consummated their love, bodies moving together in liquid motions. They came quietly and quickly, and were soon scaling the walls, using the decorative brick ledge for footing.   
  
Duo felt a wave of vertigo wash over him as he looked down, the canopy spinning in his vision. "Uhn..." One hand came off the wall to steady his head, the other gripping the bricks so tightly his knuckles were slowly turning white.   
  
"Duo?" Heero...sounded...concerned... The American felt his stomach heave, and the other hand came off the wall to grab at his chest. He--couldn't--breathe--   
  
"DUO!"   
  
==========================================   
  
"Baka," Heero sighed, cradling Duo's unconscious form in his arms as he flew up to the roof. It was a good thing the damn wings actually worked, or...   
  
Or...   
  
He didn't want to think about the other possibility. He'd been frozen in place as Duo's hand slipped, eyes wide with horror. But his training had kicked in in record-breaking time, wings slicing through the cloth to unfurl, stretching tentatively, then beating rapidly in powerful motions that made the tree branches sway.   
  
Diving down after his freefalling lover, heart in his throat, the Japanese boy had grabbed him by one dangling leg and pulled him into a tight embrace. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins, sharpening his vision, his hearing, even his tactile senses. He could feel the shift in atmospheric pressure as they rose, could feel the slight moisture that meant rain later that day. It was a strange sensation, and one that faded as soon as his feet touched the cold stone.   
  
"Saved again by an angel," Duo murmured as his eyes fluttered open to see dumbfounded blue eyes staring back at him. "Where are we?"   
  
"The roof. What did you think you were doing, Duo?" His voice cracked as Heero's eyes demanded an answer, and they demanded an answer *now*. The slight tic beating under his left eye told him his answer had better be damn good.   
  
"I got dizzy," he blurted out.   
  
"Dizzy?" Heero felt light-headed. Dizzy...what a baka. He realized his arms were trembling as Duo laid a calming hand on his shoulder. "Just don't do it again," he said, his poker face snapping back on with a 'click'.   
  
"Okay, okay, you've convinced me. I'm never scaling a wall without a harness again. Now," he said, trying, rather obviously in Heero's opinion, to change the subject, "how about those two pools?"   
  
==========================================   
  
"Are you sure this was the way?" Duo asked for the seventh time that minute. "I don't know...something about this just isn't right." He jumped as something furry skimmed over his foot, sending blatant chills down his spine. He would never be able to forget that feeling, hanging over a pit of rats, all intent on sharpening their incisors on his skinny hide.   
  
"I'm sure, baka. Stop wiggling, you'll set your braid on fire," he hissed, frowning as Duo jumped again, tipping the torch precariously close to the long chestnut coil. Duo stuck his tongue out at his lover, only to lose his footing and go tumbling to the ground.   
  
"That's what I'm talking about, Duo," Heero sighed as he pulled the still smiling American to his feet. The darkness began to sink in, and he suddenly threw up his hands in exasperation.   
  
"Ow! That was my nose..."   
  
"Well, *that* was our torch, Duo. Now we can't see anything. It'll be slow going from here."   
  
"It's dark in here and I'm cold!" He sniffed pathetically, hugging his jacket around him against the dampness that was slowly seeping into their clothes.   
  
"Here." He felt around until his hands connected with solid flesh covered in a thin layer of black cotton. "I don't want you wandering off." Duo snorted, mildly perturbed by the idea that Heero thought he needed to be watched, but slid his hand into his waiting one. And nearly jumped five feet into the air as he felt a hand cupping his ass.   
  
"Jesus, what are you doing?"   
  
"Carrying you."   
  
Duo paused to consider. "That sounds nice," he sighed, voice slightly dreamy. "Like the virginal bride and his oh-so-sexy groom as they step over the threshold and into their new home." Heero chuckled softly, one arm winding around Duo's back to hold him up. Their combined body heat kept both of them warm.   
  
"Except you're no virgin. And I really don't want to stay here longer than necessary." He closed his eyes, letting his senses guide him down the stone corridors, down a slightly sloped hill, to a thick oak door. This was it. He could sense the faint scent of sulfur, curling around his nose. His eyes watered abruptly, and he tried to convince himself that it was because of the smoke.   
  
"We're here," he told Duo, nudging him with his nose.   
  
"Um," the braided boy said, heaving a sigh. "Do I have to get down? This is comfortable..." He fought down a laugh, and set him down on the ground, taking care not to hurt him.   
  
"We just need to get the flask of water, now," Duo chirped, bouncing into the room with all of his exuberant energies at their peak. "Aha!" Leaning down, he dipped a single finger into the water, and smiled, pleased, as he discovered he'd picked the right one. "This is the cold one. Where's the bottle?"   
  
Heero handed him the small blue glass bottle, eyes surveying the room with disinterest. Something wasn't right. No, he was just being paranoid--   
  
CRACK!   
  
It was the longest three seconds of Duo's life. His eyes widened to an impossible size, making them nearly twice as large as they usually were, as he saw the black blur fly at Heero, slamming him into the ground. Heero's own face was hidden by the loose swathes of black cloth his attacker was wearing.   
  
He let out a cry of pain as he felt, rather than saw, Heero's head snapping back, connecting solidly with the intricate tiling on the floor. A sharp pain exploded behind his eyes as bright lights flashed in his sight, blinking in and out slower, then faster and faster until it all simply exploded into darkness. He was vaguely aware that the person attacking his Heero was slamming his head repeatedly against the tile, trying to kill him quickly and efficiently.   
  
Although it wasn't as if knowledge of that little fact was helping either of them. Duo fell to his knees, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, eyes weeping tears that his soul couldn't touch. They were in serious trouble this time--there was no Zechs to save them. There would be no timely arrival by Quatre or Trowa.   
  
How could they have so terribly underestimated their enemy? They were Gundam pilots. It had been drilled into their heads, over and over and over until they could eat, drink, sleep, breath, one small phrase:   
  
"Never underestimate your enemy."   
  
And yet here they were, both poised on the brink of death, helpless as kittens in a sack, with no sign of help coming. They had insisted on bringing their Gundams, not the most discreet of modes of transportation. Hell, they'd even had a nice romp in the jungle! That was how seriously they took their missions.   
  
Duo began to crawl on his hands and knees, fingers outstretched, searching along the cracks, waiting for the feel of clammy flesh and sticky blood. he called out weakly, wincing as something in his rib cage cracked.   
  
His voice was filled with such a sense of urgency, Duo felt the urge to flee begin to boil in his veins. He wouldn't let Heero push him away! He gritted his teeth and began to crawl forward again, towards Heero, towards the attacker clad in black that was strangling his lover.   
  
he replied stubbornly.   
  
Duo gasped as a sharp pain stemming from his spine flared to life, sending flashes of agony all over his body. His legs collapsed out from beneath him, and he was aware that he was falling, falling into something soft and cold, breathing in the water, choking on its overwhelming *everything*. It surrounded him, it became his world. Breathe in, breathe out. Vomit up more water, choke more down.   
  
And then, it suddenly stopped.   
  
Strands of DNA began to twist and mutate, brain cells activating and awakening with a painful slowness. The water ceased to burn his lungs and instead, he found himself breathing the cold water of the pool like air. His eyes snapped open at the realization, and he discovered he could see again.   
  
It began as a tearing feeling deep inside, like someone had reached inside his stomach and torn out his intestines, leaving them in a trail on the floor. Then it changed, became something else, something so powerful he felt as if it would rent him in two, splitting him from crotch to sternum. He felt a strange sensation rushing over every pore of his skin, pushing its way inside him. Tiny green lights began to flash around him, collecting to form a small green ball. With a soft sigh, it buried itself in his chest, slowly expanding outward, dissolving his clothes.   
  
Duo felt the water rushing past his face, realized he was smiling. The feeling of the power rushing through him was intoxicating; he craved more. It was heady, almost like the rush that comes with really good sex or danger. His fingers twitched, aching to feel the air on his body, to let the light inside him explode outward.   
  
With a loud boom, he exploded from the pool, green eyes narrowing as he saw the mysterious assailant standing over his lover, one arm raised to deliver a death blow.   
  
"SHINIGAMI LIVES!" 


	5. Chapter 5

_Oh dear._  
  
Dominic sighed as he watched Duo fight Sandalith in the full length mirror in his room. She'd certainly underestimated her opponent; with that long scythe of his, he looked almost like Death. Close, but not quite; an affinity was not good enough. He had to become more to defeat Sandalith.   
  
They parried blows, neither gaining an advantage, his blonde servant using her bare hands to stop his wild cross-cuts. His ki flickered wildly; the transformation had been too recent for him to access anything near to full power. With a burst of strength, the braided boy pinned Sandalith to the wall, impaling her on the staff end of his scythe. With a quick flick of his wrist, the blade disengaged, spinning rapidly in the air, bleeding power into the room. Every muscle in her body tensed as she prepared to lunge--   
  
Dominic winced as her head was pinned to the wall, her slender body crumpling lifelessly to the ground and dissolving into dust.   
  
"Ouch," he sighed, and waved his hand. A large crack appeared in the mirror, shattering the glass to pieces. The clear shards tinkled slowly to the ground, crunching as his boots came down hard on them, grinding them to dust.   
  
==========================================   
  
He wasn't sure *where* exactly the scythe had come from, but it felt natural in his hands, an extension of himself rather than a mere weapon. It felt like his Gundam; they were partners, more than a battle armament and its wielder; it was like his arm, rather than his blade.   
  
He felt no remorse as she died, blood welling up from the bottom of her neck, dripping drop by drop onto the tiles. She had tried to kill both of them. And failed.   
  
And then her body simply turned to dust, fine brown sand piling where she had laid.   
  
Duo stood, panting, sweat dripping down his face and stinging his eyes, the blade of his scythe whistling through the air as it flew back to him. It seemed to sing as it returned to his hand, flicking once to loose the blood from the arch. He watched with a strange satisfaction as the scythe melted away into a little green ball of light that melted into his skin, suffusing him with a faint glow. He felt the adrenaline begin to seep away, leaving him with a headache and a growing feeling of wrongness. They had to leave soon.   
  
No, they had to leave now. Scooping up the forgotten flask in his hands, he dipped it into the cold water pool and stoppered it firmly, shoving it into his shirt pocket.   
  
He knelt beside Heero, hands working over his body, assessing damages and potential escape plans. The slender boy had red hand prints on his neck that would soon purple and flower into ugly bruises, a painful reminder of their own mortality. He winced as he felt bones in Heero's wrist grate together; broken. He wouldn't be piloting a Gundam any time soon.   
  
Amazingly enough, his face had suffered little damage. A thin scratch raked across the sloped bridge of his nose, dripping blood, but other than that, he looked as good as he had the day Duo had first met him on the pier. His breath came in soft exhalations; Duo rested a hand on his chest, and nodded, feeling the contraction of his lungs. No broken ribs, then. He'd been afraid that he'd had a pierced lung, which would have been bad news indeed.   
  
"Heero," he said gently, shaking his rounded shoulders, wincing as his hands came away with small, wispy feathers. "Wake up. We've got to get going." The Japanese boy moaned a bit, but slowly ascended from his stupor, Prussian eyes blinking dazedly at the sudden light.   
  
"Duo," he sighed softly, breath warm against his face. "You're different," noted Heero, one hand reaching up to cup his face. His thumb grazed lightly across his eyelids, noting their softness, storing it away for instance of separation. "We're not the same anymore."   
  
Duo nodded slowly, eyes brimming with tears. He wasn't sure why.   
  
==========================================   
  
"He came as you predicted," Treize said, voice low, as he rocked idly back and forth on the balls of his feet. "And Duo killed Sandalith. As I predicted."   
  
"You are truly in my image," Dominic chuckled softly, one hand reaching out to ruffle his hair affectionately in a cheap imitation of father and son relationships. "She is dead; traitors will always trade sides again as it suits them. She had far outlasted her use."   
  
"The boy is paralyzed," Treize uttered softly, turning away from Dominic, from the room that had been decorated to appear exactly as his old study in OZ, to stare out the window. Even the Keys were restless, knowing that something was happening. And for the first time in hundreds of years, they had a possible revolt on their hands.   
  
As if Dominic hadn't even heard him, he continued. "Do you think the Gundams have enough power to destroy the Palazzio?"   
  
Treize smiled behind his glass of wine.   
  
"I see." The dark-haired man came up behind him, looping his arms around his waist as he pressed a chaste kiss to his neck. "I see. What do you think, my beautiful little pet?"   
  
From the shadows, a dark-haired girl emerged, black opal eyes glowing wildly. "I believe my husband will triumph in anything he chooses to do. It is the only way. It is the way that our people have taught and Wufei will act accordingly. Your resistance is--"   
  
"--useless, I know, Meiran. You've told me countless times, but it never ceases to amuse me." He laughed fruitlessly. "I suppose that's why I keep asking."   
  
"You mock me." Her voice was hollow, mirroring the dark circles pasted beneath her eyes.   
  
"I mock those who follow an antiquated and outdated culture. Honor and justice have no place in the real world." He watched Treize silently, measuring his responses and short breaths. "How ironic. Your husband entrusted your care to *him*, this man who will ultimately destroy you. How to honor a man who has slept with another man, given his wife to death from carelessness? Honor, Meiran?"   
  
She looked away and refused to answer.   
  
"Ah well." Dominic chuckled. "It will all be over soon. The play comes to a faltering end, Treize. Have you served your Master well? Will you be rewarded...?"   
  
"I do not pretend to know your will, Dominic. You are capricious and as changing as the tides; utterly predictable in your bouts of insanity."   
  
"Silence," he hissed, fingers curling into vicious claws.   
  
"I will not. Your instability may yet cost you victory. A commander needs a clear head. Tell me, you do this for victory or for revenge?" He turned, his blue eyes boring into the darkness. "Were you angry when you found that Darius had been used? That he was as barren as the darkest side of the sun? Did it make you want to kill him and his insubordinate lover?   
  
"You hurry, because you know it is only a matter of time before Duo's seed takes hold and then it will be too late for you; too late for your grand plans. You have planned so long, but your impatience draws the act to an early closing and the players rebel. You were foolish to allow them back into the Palazzio, and now they will escape.   
  
"Did you know that he is Darius' son? That his ki is as compatible with yours as his father's? They look nothing alike, thanks to his birth mother. His eyes are the same, though." He fingered the stem of his glass thoughtfully.   
  
Dominic stared at Treize.   
  
"Are you in love with the blasted child? You said yourself he has the same ki. A farmer may fall in love with his prize hen if she holds his dead wife's ki. And here I thought you were only in it for the pretty Chinese pilot." He barked a short, humorless laugh. "You said he was paralyzed?"   
  
"Sandalith severed his spine. He will not walk again. He would die transferring the child." The ginger-haired man shrugged. "He can still be made to fit your uses, if you choose, but he will not be able to fight back." Their eyes met in perfect understanding.   
  
"What good is he if he can't fight back? If I can't hear him screaming, feel every muscle grow taut as I claim him? That's not ambitious, Khushrenada. I admired you for your ambition and your desire. However worldly," he added with a smirk.   
  
"No, I believe we will force their hand. There is a way for him to walk again."   
  
"That is dangerous, Dominic. Unlock him and you may have a greater mess on your hands than you have now." Sighing, he turned to Meiran, who was vacillating between glaring at him and glowering at Dominic.   
  
"It is the only way. Suffer my desire," he said childishly. "Are you ready, child?" asked Dominic abruptly. The raven-haired girl shrugged, crossing her arms over her chest. "I didn't think so. Stay here, then, I don't care. You will play the part I assign, for I run this little play and not you. I warn both of you now," he shouted, shadows looping around his ki, "do not cross me. Or I will kill you."   
  
Treize nodded politely.   
  
"Aa. Shall we go?" Dominic nodded and then they were off.   
  
==========================================   
  
Duo was beside himself. "You really can't feel this?" he asked hopefully, poking one of Heero's long legs again. The Japanese boy shook his head disconsolately. "Damn." He closed his eyes briefly, trying to clear his head.   
  
"You have to get out of here, Duo," Heero insisted, hands grabbing at his collar. "I want you to leave me behind. You've got to get Quatre and the others. I'll still be here." He tried a soft smile that quickly faded as Duo trembled with fury.   
  
"No! I'm not _fucking_ leaving you. How many *fucking* times have we _fucking_ gone OVER THIS?!?" Heero shook his head; for a Catholic boy, Duo sure cursed a lot.   
  
"Can you fly?" Heero blinked twice. "Forgot about those damn wings, didn't you? We're not human anymore, Heero. We're not human! And these...things...we're up against, they aren't either. So you can either sit there," he snapped, grabbing his shirt and ripping it up the back, "and mope or you can get us the hell out of here."   
  
Duo smirked as the small wings no larger than his palm slowly unfolded, stretching and quivering, arcing over his head and draping against the floor. A few feathers dropped to the ground as he gave them a test flap or two, then lifted off the ground, one hand outstretched.   
  
"Are you coming?"   
  
Duo grinned, jumping up and down. "I've never flown outside of Shinigami's cabin," said the braided one, twitching with delight.   
  
"Well, neither--"   
  
Soundlessly, Heero dropped to the floor in a dead slump, wings slowly folding in on themselves.   
  
"Why hello!" He whirled around, growling as he saw two familiar figures step forward, both wearing OZ uniforms. "Fancy meeting you here, Duo Maxwell. How unexpected."   
  
"What are you doing here?" Their faces suddenly became clear in the low light. "Khushrenada! I knew we shouldn't have trusted you," Duo sneered, dropping down on one knee to check Heero's pulse. Steady and strong; so what caused his fall?   
  
"Give it up, Duo. The game is over, the hands are face up on the table and I win. If you leave now, I promise I won't hurt Heero." He didn't trust the glint in that eye for even a tenth of a second.   
  
"Like hell you won't. You can't beat us." He felt a familiar heat rush through his body; yes, he could almost see the outline of the scythe, glowing and twisting into a blade. Almost painfully, the scythe suddenly disappeared, wrenched away from his grasp.   
  
"Not so cocky now, are we? He would want you to save yourself, Duo. So go. Take your scythe--" He smirked, spinning the green blade on one fingertip. "--And take one last good look at him.   
  
"He's mine, now. He always has been. He was supposed to be mine, my child, my spawn and heir. And my body." He shrugged his arms. "This one is old and displeasing to the eye. Only a body like Heero's would be able to withstand the transference of souls." Dominic grinned. "But I want to keep him for a while. So I'll just use his child's body instead. Just as good, ne?"   
  
Duo watched him rant with a growing sense of horror. "You can't," he said simply. "Heero would never betray me with someone else." But deep inside, a little voice was screaming at him, telling him that wasn't exactly what the monster meant.   
  
"I'm not talking about mating him with a woman, although that would be interesting to see. I'm talking about using your precious lover to create a child. It would kill him, but..." He shrugged. "It's not a big deal in the long run."   
  
"He wouldn't."   
  
His denial rang out sharply, biting and nipping at his soul. Treize looked away, a faint expression of disgust on his face. "Heero wouldn't do that to me. He *loves* me," Duo said again, cradling Heero's body in his arms.   
  
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" Duo realized with a start that Heero's eyes had flickered open sometime while Dominic had been talking, and he was pushing himself to his feet, walking--no, floating--across the room, head lolling bonelessly.   
  
Duo tried to summon his scythe again, to no end. He was stuck. he called urgently.   
  
He watched with a strange sense of morbid curiosity and horror as Heero undressed, fingers fumbling the buttons of his shirt, then bent down on all fours, hips raised, legs parted.   
  
"I think he wants something," wondered Dominic aloud. "I'm not sure...could it be this?" Brutally, he jabbed his finger into the air. Heero's body rocked forward, as if he'd been hit. Heero let out a choked cry, eyes squeezing shut.   
  
Duo couldn't take it anymore. He rushed forward, knocking Dominic far away from Heero, then gasped as his left ankle twisted painfully and he fell onto Heero, the force of impact rolling them both across the floor and into the cold water pool.   
  
Heero's eyes snapped open as his body met with cold water, raising gooseflesh on his arms and legs, grabbing his ankles and pulling him screaming down into the unknown depths.   
  
Duo surfaced first, his hair a dead weight on his head, gasping for breath. He looked down into the clear water and nearly fainted as he was met with nothing but water. No Heero. No unruly brown hair floating in the water, no Prussian eyes, closed or not. Just...gone.   
  
He looked up suspiciously at Treize, who stared down at him impassively. "Where's Heero?"   
  
The light brown-haired man shrugged, darkness pooling around his body. Duo swallowed hard, debating the merits of ducking underwater and never coming up.   
  
"It's time we said goodbye," said Treize after a moment. Before Duo could protest, he reached down and shoved his face underwater. He kicked for a few minutes, admirable for a human, then went limp in a mass of bubbles. Dead. He left him floating face down in the cold water pool, hair slowly unraveling from its braid, loose tendrils of chestnut swirling in the slow current. Dead as a nail in his coffin.   
  
Dominic sighed beside him and kicked the prone form of the Gundam pilot. "What a waste. He was so pretty, too." With that, he pulled out a cigarette from his jacket and lit up, blowing smoke clouds into Treize's face as they waited for Heero to resurface. 


	6. Chapter 6

  
"You just let them *leave*?!?" Pierce was beside himself, pacing back and forth in front of Darius' desk. The commander sat, sipping a red wine, naked in his plush leather chair, white feathered wings modestly covering his body. "Darius! Are you out of your fucking mind?!? We *need* them!" To emphasize, he slammed his hand onto the hard oak, wincing as he felt broken glass shards cut through the skin.   
  
"Like a hole in the head. They're unstable, Pierce, when they're not together. If we can get the boy Unlocked there's no way Dominic can stop us." Darius sat forward in his chair, eyes glittering with some unnamed promise. Pierce couldn't stop himself from staring. When had he lost so much weight? His skin was wrapped so tightly around his cheekbones, it looked as if it would tear at any moment.   
  
"Gods," Pierce swore, waving his hand in front of Darius' face. The younger man didn't even blink, but stared blankly through him. "Don't you feel anything anymore? You used to be--!" He stopped abruptly and stomped out of the room. A thought occurred to him, and he turned around to say something, only to have a sharp burst of pain reverberate through his lungs, burning and clenching at his heart.   
  
He fell to his knees, blood roaring in his ears as his pulse became louder and louder to him, washing over him like a bloody drum. His eyes leaked red tears as blue lines began to creep up his face. With one last choked breath, he fell to the floor, twitching and moaning softly, blood seeping from his cut hand.   
  
Darius watched him impassively, then poured himself another glass of wine. His brown eyes flashed silver for a brief moment, but it could have been the lightning outside...   
  
"195--a good year."   
  
==========================================   
  
"Is there something wrong, Wufei?" Quatre asked softly. Wufei stared blankly at his hands, as if they contained all his secrets, then returned to his own thoughts. "Wufei, you're so tense I can feel it from across the compound." He sank to his knees next to the Chinese boy, who sat meditating in the empty cafeteria.   
  
"Can't you talk to me, Wufei? We've come too far to let ourselves become separated by what's happened. Lives depend on *us*, directly this time. But we have to stay together, have to stay focused. Please..."   
  
Wufei sat silently, eyes clenched shut tightly, fingers locked into intricate patterns that rested on his silk-covered knees. A long moment passed and at last, Quatre pulled himself to his feet and began to walk away, footsteps hollow on the broken and burned tiles.   
  
"She died, Quatre.   
  
"She wasn't supposed to die, but she did. There is no justice in the world.   
  
"He looked nothing like her. But he had the same imperious attitude, the same smile. He made the same noises when we--"   
  
Abruptly, Wufei stopped and one bandaged hand flew to his mouth, as if trying to stifle his cries. Quatre sat back down beside him, and, tucking his legs beneath him, rubbed what he hoped were comforting circles on his back.   
  
"She was my justice. I hid behind her the way a child hides beneath his bed or a boy hides behind his monster of steel and wires. That part of my life is over now.   
  
"So now, now that my colony lies as dust in space and I have moved on, I discover that she is not dead, that she lives, and that I have entrusted her...safekeeping to my enemy.   
  
"A small part of me wants her to just go back to her grave and pretend that I never knew. I have moved on with my life.   
  
"Yet another part desperately craves what she represents. My old life as a scholar, my homeworld. My family.   
  
"I vacillate between one and the other, ambiguous and hopeful. Hoping that I will not be forced to choose. Yet, fear of decision, of moving forward is cowardly. And I have become a coward.   
  
"And so, Quatre Raberba Winner, what do you suggest I do?" His voice was only slightly lilting, hinting of false impressions and forced bravado.   
  
Quatre swallowed hard.   
  
"I don't know," said the blonde boy hesitantly. "I do know that--nngh!" Suddenly, he fell forward, clutching his chest, sweat trickling down his face in small beads. "Heero!" moaned Quatre before passing out in Wufei's lap.   
  
"Heero? What's wrong with Heero?" the Chinese boy demanded, shaking the little blonde's shoulders, to no avail.   
  
==========================================   
  
Beneath the water, Duo smirked. It was a good thing he was able to breathe underwater, or else he would *really* have been dead. Idiots, he sighed internally, adding another crime to the long list of things to avenge once he got his hands on Dominic. They were still standing there, watching the pool, waiting for Heero.   
  
Getting no response, he rolled his eyes. Still out cold, probably. Well then, he'd just review his list a few thousand more times...   
  
Crime #1. For attempted homicide of the braided one: Death.   
  
Crime #2. For touching the braided one's braid sans permission: Death.   
  
Crime #3. For a second attempted homicide of the braided one: Death.   
  
Crime #4. For attempted homicide of the braided one's lover: An eternity in hell.   
  
Crime #5....   
  
==========================================   
  
"Do you think he's dead, Treize?" Dominic's lips twisted into a cherry smirk as he twisted his head around to face Treize, who was standing directly behind him, without moving his neck or body. Fighting down a shudder of revulsion, the former general of OZ sighed.   
  
"Of course he isn't. Pilot 01 is nothing if not resourceful." The demi-god nodded slowly, absorbing Treize's statement and evaluating it for bias. "But he has been down there a very long time."   
  
"It would be nice for us if he would just die." Treize stared, horrified, at Dominic. "Oh, don't give me that look, Treize-*sama*!" He snorted. "He's given us a lot of trouble."   
  
"I thought--"   
  
"Exactly, Treize-sama, that's a wonderful point. I do believe I will reconsider." He took another puff of his cigarette, blowing intricate shapes in the air. A smoke angel flapped her wings desperately, only to be crushed in between Dominic's hands. "Heero would provide the genetic material and my lovely lady Meiran will provide the host. Lovely set up--we would come out with a very physically attractive body for me to inhabit, wasn't that the plan?"   
  
"It--"   
  
"Yes, of course it was, Treize-sama. But no longer! My plans, as well-thought and perfectly executed as they were, have changed. For making us wait, for making this ordeal *ever* so long and complicated, I've decided to use Heero as the host instead of Meiran." He shrugged.   
  
"No need to speak, my Treize-sama. We both know he'll die eventually; what better way than bearing my child, and my new body? What a shame about his face, though. You don't see that kind of beauty in the Japanese anymore; he's a rarity. A prize. I believe I'll keep his body to amuse myself with." He put out his cigarette on Treize's hand, delighting in the slight hiss that escaped from bruised lips.   
  
"I think we've played enough. You get rid of Meiran; she's no longer a factor in this play. Her scenes have been cut. Tell her--" His voice cracked as Dominic's head slowly changed into Wufei's. "Tell her I'm sorry."   
  
Treize nodded and hurried out of the chamber, Dominic's rolling laughter nipping at his heels.   
  
==========================================   
  
Dominic shed his clothes quickly and dove into the pool, swimming past Duo's prone form and down into the depths of the blackening waters. At the very bottom, he could see a body hovering in the water, limp like a rag doll, and smiled through his teeth. Reaching out one hand, he grabbed Heero by his hair, and yanked him up and out of the water.   
  
He deposited him by the pool and stretched out beside Heero, admiring his naked body, hands itching to run over his skin. The boy was growing clammy with gooseflesh. "Still sleeping, hmm?" He took a quick look around, eyes never resting on the fallen Shinigami, and smirked. "Then you won't mind if I steal a quick kiss, then, will you?"   
  
He leaned down, licking his lips in anticipation, pupils rapidly dilating, and, using two fingers to open Heero's mouth, opened his own mouth. A long, black tongue, covered in some kind of clear stickiness and forked at the end, snaked out and pushed between Heero's lips. His hands fell away as his tongue plunged in and out of the warm recesses of his mouth, holding down Heero's wrists. Even in sleep, his body trembled with fury at the violation and his hands threatened to fly up and choke him.   
  
Growing tired of raping his mouth, Dominic bit down on his own tongue, letting the black liquid spill down Heero's throat, and then bit Heero's pink tongue, drinking deeply, encouraging the mingling of their blood. "With my blood I bind thee, and by the Father so shall it be." He began a set of high-pitched clicking noises with his tongue, complicated in rhythm and pace, then paused to view the results of his work.   
  
The Japanese boy lay on the white tiling, the color a strange contrast to his dark skin, eyes open and glazed over, occasionally rolling into the back of his head as he attempted to fight the spell. Dominic waved his hands, and his legs spread on command, lifting his hips to present him with the tightly wrinkled skin protecting his entrance.   
  
Positioning himself between his legs, he kissed little circles on his thighs, stroking the big muscle in his legs, and took a deep breath, about to thrust forward.   
  
==========================================   
  
Zechs emerged from the shadows beside the door, smiling as Treize shot him a knowing look and left it slightly ajar. Wherever they were going, he didn't expect to ever see his former lover again. Very well, then; he committed that little knowing smirk to memory, filing it away in a part of him he had annexed off, keeping it sacred. And whole.   
  
He slid in quietly, noting the elaborate pains taken to keep the room from seeming like a trap. Ornate gold carvings and inlays, various Oriental rugs and strange vases adorning every corner. In vain; Zechs could see very well the hidden cameras and small slots for the steel bars to come down from in the windows.   
  
What he found was not at all what he'd expected. After the long crawl up from the pit, he'd wandered around aimlessly until he heard Treize's voice down the hall, and came to investigate. The girl...   
  
"Who are you?" she demanded, holding the letter opener in front of her. Zechs winced; it had a rather soft edge and death by a blunt object was painful and unpleasant. "What do you want? I've never seen you before, so you can't be one of *his* lackeys."   
  
"Miss," he began, trying to take her arm. "We've got to get out of here, there isn't much time--"   
  
"And you know how to get out of this maze?" she snorted, wiping black bangs from her eyes. "Believe me, I've tried."   
  
"I've lived here a long time," he informed her quietly. "I can get you out of here, if you want--"   
  
"What's your name, again? I didn't *hear* you the first time," she snapped, jabbing perilously close to his stomach as she circled him.   
  
"Ashura, miss." The old lie slipped from his mouth like a curse word, and he made a face. She frowned at him, noting the expression.   
  
"What's the matter? Don't like your own name? What kind of a person are you, anyway? Are you a servant? A Key, perhaps?" She lowered the knife in order to peer into his blue eyes. "Are you a soldier?" asked the girl, gesturing to the coat of his uniform.   
  
"All of that is true; now can we please go?" Outside, the storm crackled and boiled as the front of the dark clouds passed over the Palazzio. "Miss!" She glared at him.   
  
"That tells me nothing, Soldier-Key-Servant boy. Now, the door's open and I can see--You!" Zechs turned around slowly, his heart telling him exactly who it was before his eyes came to rest on Treize Khushrenada. How ironic, he thought, holding back a smile.   
  
"What are you doing here?" she said, glancing back and forth from Treize to Zechs, unsure of who was the greater enemy at the moment.   
  
"Meiran," Treize sighed in that cold and yet calmly assuming way of his, "I'm here to kill you." Lightning flashed outside as rain began to wet the windows again.   
  
==========================================   
  
"Don't you touch him!" Duo screamed, nerves afire. Uncertainty fled; he had to stop him before he laid another finger on Heero! The battle between wanting to preserve his cover and keeping Heero from being raped was not exactly a toss-up.   
  
Dominic's surprise showed on his face as Duo landed a punch that was hard enough to send him hurtling forward, his nose connecting painfully with the floor with a loud . He followed with a swift kick to his side, enjoying the crack that sounded from the area of his ribcage. Every broken bone, every salty tear, all repaid in full. Red clouded his vision as he found he couldn't stop hitting the fallen man, couldn't stop the memories from coming and flooding his mind. One kick, then another. And another punch.   
  
A primal scream tore from his throat as he pulled back his hand to deliver one last blow. Blood, there was blood everywhere...the rats were biting his legs, their tiny sharp teeth digging into the flesh there, dragging down the backs of his calves as they refused to let go...Heero, crying, he was *crying* for God's sake..."I KILLED GOD!"...hands...   
  
...hands?   
  
Hands. The American felt the blood drain away from his face. "Heero," Duo sighed, pulling the unseeing boy into a tight embrace. "Mine..." He buried his face in Heero's neck, nearly gagging as he saw a trail of black blood streaming from the corner of his slightly parted lips.   
  
"Are you all right?" His fingers clenched into his shoulders hard enough to leave small rounded bruises. "Heero?!? Yuy? Hey, you there?"   
  
He nearly missed it, would have if he hadn't been staring intently at his face. A small whimper worked its way free of his throat, awareness seeping at an agonizingly slow pace back into his eyes. The blood began to rush from Duo's ears, creating a dull roar like the ocean crashing along the bay. They embraced, Duo trying to touch every part of him, trying to reassure himself that yes, they were both alive and moving, their hearts beating and skin warm.   
  
"Well," said a slightly nasal voice, "isn't that just *kawaii*?!"   
  
==========================================   
  
"And?" Meiran seemed unconcerned. "It'll take a bigger man than you to destroy me. You have no honor, and I am honor-bound. Who do you think'll win a fist fight?" She showed a small smile that reminded both OZ soldiers of a certain Chinese Gundam pilot.   
  
Treize snorted as Zechs moved behind her in one swift motion and knocked her out with a well-placed hit on the nerve running along her shoulder to her neck. "What are you doing here, my lovely--"   
  
"Not 'my'," the blonde man snapped, slinging the unconscious Chinese girl over his shoulder. 'Not anymore.' Treize nodded, pressing his lips together in a thin line. "You're supposed to kill her?"   
  
The ginger-haired man turned and faced his former lover, an unreadable expression masking his true mien. "I was supposed to. I suppose I can't help it if a renegade Key kills me and escapes with the girl." Zechs looked at him carefully, noting the differences in the older man. So much to carry on only two shoulders. They should have had a lifetime...   
  
"I'll be seeing you, Milliardo." The two men, former lovers, former friends, struggled with their own demons. Pride won out and Zechs passed Treize without another word, wishing, somehow, that he had said something, done anything, to change what they both knew was about to happen.   
  
Zechs raised one hand and made a gun from it, pointing his index finger at the back of Treize's head. 'I loved you.' There was no time for any other goodbyes.   
  
The silver lance darted from his fingertips soundlessly. And the silence was worse than the sound of a gun going off.   
  
==========================================   
  
Dominic pushed himself up from the floor, his black blood hissing as it came into contact with the stone. "How touching. Did you think you could kill *me* by bashing my head into the floor a few times, Duo?" The two Gundam pilots clung closer together, eyes wide.   
  
"Did you really think that you had a chance? That by playing your pitiful games, following Darius' pitiful instructions, you could save yourselves? That you could save the world?" He laughed; a piteous sound, too high to be sane. "My arms reach farther than galaxies! You can't run and you can't hide anymore, Duo Maxwell!"   
  
He turned to Heero, eyes beginning to glaze over, waxy and dripping. "And you!" They both cringed at the sound as a roar of thunder chimed as he pointed at them. "Heero Yuy. The incredible soldier. Willing to self-destruct for his mission, any purpose. All you have to do is stick the right label on it." He leaned in closer, licking his cheek. Heero jerked away, wiping it off with his hand. Where his tongue had touched his skin, there were severe burn marks, red and angry.   
  
"I've got a little secret. The missions don't matter. Your war doesn't matter. Neither of you matters. God abandoned m--you, and then he left you to rot in your own waste. Your cross is a false symbol. You lie all the time, Duo; you've lied to yourself for years."   
  
"That's not true. You know nothing." Duo's voice was dangerously low as his slender frame shook with rage. One hand snaked up to caress the crucifix that hung around his neck, heavy with age.   
  
"I know everything about you." His hands reached out to cup both their faces almost lovingly, tenderly as a mother would her sleeping babe. His face was not-quite-angelic, not quite apologetic.   
  
"I love you both."   
  
Duo couldn't stop his stomach from turning as Dominic gazed eagerly into their faces, hoping for some response, some horrified contortion or fearful whimper. He wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing that inside he was screaming himself hoarse. His skin quivered beneath his steady hand, feeling the rough calluses slide over his cheek.   
  
"The play draws to a close; the villain makes his final appearance. Do the protagonists have what it takes to destroy the antagonist? I think not," he sighed, plucking a rose from thin air. He waved it under their noses slowly, as if trying to tempt them with Eden.   
  
Then, in a soundless explosion of color and light, the rose shattered, and everything in Duo's sight went dark. There was no color, no light, no meaning.   
  
  
The world exploded into being. It was overwhelming, it was too much; every blade of grass, every drop of sweat, every human being alive, dead and as yet unborn, every molecule and every thought and it was all so small compared to the rest of the universe, to the stars, made up of tiny molecules, and Duo could feel those tiny molecules, all pulsing rhythmically, moving towards some greater goal. Then, as if to spite him, it all began to tug in a different direction.   
  
He was pulled apart. He wasn't he anymore, he was something. A small filament, a particle in billions, zillions of particles. Small, nothing, and yet infinitely greater than the rest.   
  
  
The light from the particles was growing, coalescing into a brilliant form, a shadow and a light. It became human, its face molding from nothing. He had a red heart beating in his chest. Thump. Thump. He that was not he screamed. Somewhere in New York a girl dribbled a basketball off the pavement, thump thump. All part of a greater pattern. A greater life. Two gunshots fired and a suspect fell dead onto the concrete. Thump, thump.   
  
It was everything and nothing, it was singular and encompassed the world. Beautiful and horrifying at the same time.   
  
Life as he knew it was over.   
  
He felt himself dropping out of the blackness, out of the consciousness Dominic presented him with. The last thing he saw was that red beating heart, and the small ball of flames growing within, his child, their child, a god and a mortal. Death and life. There was a dark pit at the center, sucking the light from the body into it, making the flames grow stronger.   
  
"So now you know," the older man said softly. "You know what a grand part of the plan he is. He carries God in his heart. I will be that God." He shrugged. "You know how futile your struggles are, how powerless you truly are. All of you. Darius, that traitor Key. Armand, his pathetic telepathic lover. Even Sarsis, who was closer to the reality then all of them, and Pierce, are all misled. You know the truth. You have one move." With that, he melted into the shadows, his eyes watching them from all sides.   
  
Duo looked at Heero, speechless.   
  
"You have to kill me." His voice was firm. "There's no other way, Duo. There really isn't. We are powerless against him; he is as omnipotent as one gets without being God. And only God can resurrect."   
  
"You're not saying that--" Duo gulped as Heero ran a nail along the vein of his arm, slicing through the skin. Blood welled up, gathering at the surface, about to start pouring out of his body when the skin suddenly closed.   
  
"It doesn't want to die, Duo."   
  
"No," Duo said softly. Then his voice grew louder, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "This is crazy! I will not--" Heero covered his mouth tenderly with his own, lips brushing the anger from his face. "That's not going to make it all better," the American snapped, shaking. "I don't care what you say will happen. I lose and I lose and I lose; I'm going to stop losing people and start taking them. You can't make me do it, no matter what you say."   
  
Heero was silent for a moment. "Then we have to destroy him. And that's basically impossible." His fingers twitched restlessly; he curled them into fists and began to punch one hand against his knuckles. "He said we have one move. It's all a game to him. Everything is a game."   
  
"So we stop playing by his rules." His scythe reappeared in his hands, glowing brighter than ever. "What did you see in the rose?" He took a few practice swings for good measure, grinning at the way it swished through the cold air.   
  
"Possibility, I think," said the dark-haired boy carefully. "So you're saying--"   
  
"So I'm saying, didn't you play pretend when you were five? You know, pretend you're a mud monster? Pretend you're a fairy princess in a castle? Pretend you're a Gundam pilot in deep shit? We improvise."   
  
Heero frowned. "We don't even know what we can--"   
  
"That's the point." Duo smirked. "We don't know. We don't play with limits. Don't see an end to it; it's a never-ending curve, Hee-chan." Another slice of his scythe and a hole suddenly ripped open in the air, black and wavering. "I'll bet you if I stepped in here it would take us out of here. But if *you* stepped through, you'd go straight to Hell and beyond." Another pass and the rip closed. "Use your imagination. Hasn't anyone ever said that to you?"   
  
He swallowed hard, eyes never leaving the scythe. "No."   
  
"All this Unlocking and Locking crapola they've been talking about--that's what they mean, I think. Using what you've got isn't good enough, because you define what you've got and then all Dominic has to do is top that. Don't limit yourself to something mortal and mundane." He motioned to the pool. "All that is ritual, to help you believe. It's nothing but water."   
  
==========================================   
  
Pierce sat up shivering from his dream. Sweat coursed down his muscled chest in tiny rivulets. "Sars," he whispered, using the former Key's nickname. His lover yawned languidly and stretched in their bed. "Tell Darius he has to deploy all the troops. Now! There's no time to waste."   
  
"All of them? Pierce?"   
  
There was no answer.   
  
"Pierce?" 


	7. Chapter 7

"Nothing but water," Heero repeated flatly, his fingers curving into claws. "It was a joke all along." Duo, seeing his lover tense, sighed and rested a hand on his shoulder, kneading the hardened steel he found there. Slowly, feeling Heero return to flesh, he pressed gentle kisses to his neck and withdrew.   
  
"It's not a joke, Heero. But it is a game, and we need a plan." He smirked as Heero clutched at his braid in thought, occasionally tugging as an idea came to mind, then was dismissed. "Any ideas yet?"   
  
"No..." Shit. No ideas from Heero was like no bubbles in his Coke; a very very bad sign. "So you think we can really do it?"   
  
"Of course," Duo sighed, pulling Heero into the circle of his arms for a quick kiss. "We've done it before. We make a great team!" Flashing the victory sign at the empty room, he pulled away before their kisses turned into something they couldn't afford to do at that moment in time. "He can't be invincible. Remember when it was us against OZ? They seemed too good to be defeated, and it wasn't true. They had weaknesses. He's got to have an underbelly somewhere." Heero nodded; the logic was appropriate.   
  
"But where? It doesn't matter if he has a weakness if we can't detect it."   
  
A half-baked plan began to form in his muddled, devious mind. "I think I might have an idea. We'd have to mostly play it by ear..."   
  
And in the end, they ran with it. There was really no other choice.   
  
The scythe hummed absently in his hands, barely restrained power ingrained in every fiber of its being. It should not have existed, by all rules of time, space, and reality, yet it was there, disrupting the fabric of being with its presence. Casting one last glance at Heero, seeing the focused determination and the quiet fury, he unconsciously reaffirmed all the reasons he had chosen him as his life partner.   
  
He closed his eyes and slashed twice. *Come. I know you're in here, watching, somewhere.*   
  
Another pass, and a marble pillar wobbled and then fell, sliced neatly into two halves. Smoke and dust rose from its grave. *You're just going to sit back and nap as we destroy your life's work, hm? Guess a new body never really meant that much to you.*   
  
*Or do you think you can just swoop down and take him whenever you want? What if I...?* He tested the edge of the scythe against his thumb; blood beaded along the cut, tanged with the taste of copper and iron. Then, in a movement too swift to follow, he pressed the edge of the blade against Heero's tender, exposed throat.   
  
"Duo? What are you--?" Duo didn't dare think of the implications of their plan failing...or Dominic calling his bluff.   
  
*What if I do it? What if I just slide the blade...like this?* Heero gasped for breath as the point broke the skin and drew a small line of blood. *I'll kill him before I let you have him, you monster.*   
  
He was blown into the wall by a powerful gust of wind. "You win this round," Dominic said softly, hovering above the ground in an ungodly manner, eyes endless pools of blackness that had driven more than one man to insanity. "I win the war. And the to the winner go the spoils."   
  
Duo wiped a trickle of crimson blood from his nose onto the back of his hand and grinned. The plan was working. "You haven't won yet. You'll have to go through me..."   
  
His eyes flickered. "Gladly." His fingers curled into a fist; Duo felt some unseen hand crushing his windpipe, cracking his ribs. He whimpered, mouth working frantically, his air cut off, hands flying to his throat. "Not so brave now, Duo."   
  
"Stop!" Heero held out a hand. "Let him go!"   
  
No, Heero, don't do it...   
  
The Japanese pilot would not meet his eyes as Dominic released him. Duo fell to the ground, lights blinking in his eyes, and passed out, hearing the sound of Heero's breath beside his face.   
  
Don't...   
  
==========================================   
  
"Just you and I," Heero said softly, pressing the sides of his fists together in front of his chest. As he drew them slowly apart, Dominic looked half astonished, half amused at the silver sword that appeared in his hands. "Duo should never have been involved."   
  
"You know, then."   
  
"I do."   
  
"When?"   
  
Heero hesitated. Would it be prudent to reveal all, in the hopes that when he was dead he would spare Duo's life? No, better to be cautious. "When you showed us the rose. It all made sense, in a way. My whole life, in the context of a rose. Beautiful on the outside. Diseased on the inside." He laughed. "It's too late, isn't it? I can feel it growing, just over my heart. Sometimes it tells me things. But for now, it's just a sentient ball of light."   
  
Dominic nodded. "Your child. My body. We fight, then. The actor bows to the challenger." He pulled a sword from thin air, the blade a terrible shade of red that reminded Heero of all the blood its bearer had shed in his quest for a return to godhood.   
  
"The challenger acts in turn." Heero bowed. "And the dance begins." He thrust; Dominic blocked easily. They exchanged blows, moving in a circle, eyes locked. Heero's body seemed to have been possessed, as if some outside force had taken hold of him. The commands bypassed his mind and he simply moved, guided by a force inside of him that had no name but strangely resembled a young woman's voice. *Heero...*   
  
==========================================   
  
"Wufei..." Quatre sat up, trembling, a tear falling from one pale blue eye. "Heero...he's in trouble...he needs help..."   
  
"Quatre! I don't...wait! No, don't--" He stopped as the blonde collapsed again, head thrown back, neck open to any sudden attacker. "Don't go to sleep," he finished lamely. "Shit!" Seeing a familiar green eye in the doorway, he called, "Trowa! Come and help me carry him!"   
  
The green eyed boy simply took Quatre into his arms and carried him inside the base. "I think Darius wants to have a word with us..."   
  
==========================================   
  
Damn you, woman! Darius ranted silently. Let me have my body back! You've no idea what you've done, do you? Yalith made a face at the commander. You're ruining everything!   
  
Face it, he said reasonably, trying a different tack, you need my battle expertise. Sarsis is going to come in here any minute and demand that you open a portal to let the soldiers through...and what will you say? Um, okay, let's send our best men to a certain death trap? If Heero succeeds, the Palazzio will be nothing more than dust and rubble by dawn tomorrow.   
  
Shut up, she snapped. I'm trying to think.   
  
You need me, he said persuasively. A truce?   
  
She glared at him. A truce? When I have everything and no reason to give anything to you? I don't think so. Why would I let you have your body back? I have no body to return to, after all.   
  
What if I told you there was a way for you to get a body permanently? You know this form is rejecting your soul.   
  
She froze.   
  
==========================================   
  
They had just finished merging as Trowa burst in, carrying Quatre in his arms, the blonde's limbs hanging loosely. "Something's wrong with Quatre."   
  
"He said something was wrong with Heero, that Heero needed help. Then he passed out," Wufei added. "I'm getting a very bad feeling, here..."   
  
At that moment, Sarsis burst in, eyes wild. "Pierce says that you need to send all of your troops to the Palazzio at once!" When Darius made no move, he stared. "Aren't you going to do something?"   
  
"What do you want me to do?"   
  
"I... We've waited our whole lives for an opportunity to destroy him, and you're just going to sit there?" His voice broke. "You have to help them, at least try! Please!"   
  
"I'm afraid it's all up to Heero now." He turned away to stare out the window blankly. "Have a seat, gentlemen, enjoy the view. It may be the last time you ever see it."   
  
==========================================   
  
He began to tire quickly; his body was not used to the weight of the sword. Smelling blood in the water, Dominic pressed his attack, drawing first blood across Heero's cheek, a shallow cut. Sweat dripped down his face, into his eyes and the cut, so he closed his eyes and moved by feel, blocking one wild chop with the edge of his sword, sending tremors down his arms. The blade snapped, falling to the ground and bouncing once. It turned to dust in the air. A metallic ring began to sound in Heero's ears.   
  
"You lose," said Dominic flatly. Heero swallowed hard, finding the point of the archaic blade pressed to his heart. Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to push forward, cutting past the skin. "Are you prepared to die? Last words?"   
  
"No." Seizing the last of his fading courage, he gripped the edges of the white ghost blade with his hands, wincing as it sliced cleanly across his palms. It would hurt like a motherfucker soon, but he intended to be finished by the time that became a liability.   
  
*Heero...*   
  
It's too late, isn't it?   
  
Heero?!? Yuy? Hey, you there?   
  
No need to speak, my Treize-sama.   
  
Pilot 01 is nothing if not resourceful.   
  
It would be nice for us if he would just die.   
  
Dead as a nail in his coffin.   
  
You lose.   
  
I know my enemy.   
  
Heero! I am right over here so come and kill me!   
  
*Heero.*   
  
The voices crowded out the slow drone of the forever mission-accepting, mission-completing soldier, crying and weeping and screaming, all shouting at the top of their lungs, all begging to be heard. The sounds rose in a terrible cacophony of anger and sorrow, singing a melody that had no name, from a time before the beginning of dark eternity.   
  
And the melody became words, sandy sculptures on the beach of his mind, corners softened by the waves, hardening into stone until they stood out, clear in his mind, dazzling as crystal.   
  
He began in a low, dead tone. "With my hands, I created thee."   
  
A flash of silver. Dominic growled low in his throat.   
  
"With my blood, I bound thee."   
  
"With my name, I call thee."   
  
He spoke an unnatural word, never meant to pass by human lips, felt the syllables tear from his throat. He coughed up blood, felt the sword slice cleanly through him.   
  
But it was too late for Dominic. He looked at his hands, at the sword they were both clutching, at the blood streaming from Heero's slashed hands, the skin peeling away. The red liquid began to blow an eerie white, expanding and stretching, forming *something*. It wasn't a man. It wasn't even a creature, it was abstract, it defied knowledge and logic. It simply was, and there was no rational explanation in the universe Heero had witnessed to explain the thing that stood before him, glowing and yet drawing in the light.   
  
It took Dominic into its hold, and the former god, the madman who had destroyed Heero's life and put it back together, scratched and cracked, disappeared from existence. His spark of life, the thing that gave him a mind and a soul, was simply gone. Extinguished. He had been dealt with. He wasn't simply a flower wilted; the plant, the leaves, the soil around it; all had gone.   
  
He felt a great tension seep from his shoulders as he turned towards Duo. "It's over!" he shouted, running towards his lover. Halfway there, the glowing astral figure stopped him and reached out towards the unconscious American, pulling him up short. Duo's long braid hung loosely, switching back and forth like a pendulum as he floated in the air.   
  
"You can't have him," Heero said, tugging with his mind. Duo's body shifted towards him--his eyelashes wavered, as if he was trying to emerge from a deep sleep. "It's not his time. He's mine."   
  
To his dismay, the figure gave the mental equivalent of a shrug and started for the sleeping boy again. It reared back as a streak of flame shot from Heero's fingertips.   
  
"I thought I told you 'No'." Another jet of white hellfire, enveloping the room with its oppressive heat. "I meant it." As the specter tried one last time to take Duo, Heero felt a dam inside him burst. Every hurt, every humiliation and injustice that had branded its soul suddenly came rushing out in a colossal explosion of heat and sound that shook the Palazzio. The ceiling was cracking, falling down, revealing a bit of night sky.   
  
"NO!"   
  
==========================================   
  
Someone was slapping him.   
  
"Quatre..."   
  
Trowa? It was Trowa... "Wake up, Quatre, something's happening." His hearts flared to life at the sight of the familiar pointed chin and defiantly blank green eyes. Something's happening all right, he thought, sitting up. His stomach muscles protested loudly, screeching about a chiropractor, but he ignored them. A problem for another day.   
  
"What's happening?"   
  
"The sun is rising."   
  
"Oh." Is that all? he thought, almost irritably, before noticing the tightly drawn looks on the faces around him. Even calm, collected Darius seemed deeply disturbed, his wide, generous mouth shortened to a terse slash. "Is there a problem?"   
  
"It's the middle of the night."   
  
==========================================   
  
Every pore suddenly exploded into flames. It poured out of him like sweat and tears, the heat burning his skin, searing his body and his face until he could peel out of his old skin like paper.   
  
The specter backed up, as if blinded. Heero's mind rapidly calculated how much heat and energy he had to be giving off to light up the entire room. It was not a very comforting number.   
  
Taking a deep breath, he took hold of the power growing inside him, leaking from the small spirit slowly unwinding its soul from above his heart and *pushed* it out, through his arms, down his fingertips, and into the air. Every muscle in his hands cramped in protest as the fire exploded into the air, roaring and crackling. With one last mental scream, the figure disappeared, like it had never been there. Only a trace of brimstone betrayed its being. Heero knew, with some kind of inner sense that pulsed along the lines of flames coursing through his veins, that it wasn't gone.   
  
After all, how could someone like Heero have destroyed something like that figure, knowing its name, knowing the history of its descendents and its children? Once it had been called Yahweh. Now it had no name, only false worshippers and dangerous angels cast from heaven.   
  
He dropped to the floor and fainted, his body draped across Duo's. They'd won. At last, at long last, it was time to rest. 


	8. Epilogue

  
Trowa wasn't sure what he'd find when searched through the rubble of the Palazzio. Scorch marks and various burns scrawled "fire" all over the walls, yet in the center of the mess laid Heero and Duo, unharmed and exhausted.   
  
"No, Hee-chan...don't wanna go on a mission," Duo murmured as Trowa shook his shoulder gently.   
  
He'd had plenty of time to think about it. Quatre had volunteered to go searching for the two boys, whatever their current status, and Trowa nearly had to threaten him back with a knife to keep him in bed. Some part of him knew it was irrational, but they were all doing irrational things now.   
  
Looping one arm around both of the boys, he dragged them through the dust and dirt and broken bits of clay and glass. From the extent of the damage, he'd have to guess the fight had been... There were no words to describe the tile mosaics that patterned the remnants of the walls. Had it all been a sick joke?   
  
The first panel was a clear depiction of an angel, long dark hair cascading over his back, falling to earth, the pieces of his halo in one hand. Several of the next few pictures Trowa didn't understand, and somehow he knew he wasn't meant to. That was okay; he was just a person now, not a soldier. He didn't have to study the meanings of things as if they held the key to his survival or defeat.   
  
The Romafeller Foundation and the White Fang had destroyed each other in a space battle of epic proportions. Now all there was to do was pick up the pieces and move on.   
  
He scanned quickly over some frames with Heero and Duo, standing in darkness, poised to fight. Clear comprehension dawned as he realized they were actually fighting the shadows. Unbidden, a shiver raced down his spine, its long tendrils reaching up to his ears and whispering forbidden secrets there. Images of the Japanese boy flashed in his vision; trembling slightly, he tightened his hold and began to walk again.   
  
Not wanting any other epiphanies that might change his opinion of Heero or Duo, he closed his eyes against the walls and carried his friends out to safety, choosing ignorance over knowledge. Even fools knew that ignorance was bliss.   
  
==========================================   
  
"So," Duo whispered huskily, leaning forward to rest his head on Heero's shoulder, his groin bumping lightly against Heero's spandex-clad butt. A return to the old and comforting; Duo was wearing his priest outfit, his black cap hiding his haunted eyes and starkly gaunt cheekbones. "Here we are." There they were indeed, on a steamliner from the Sanc Kingdom to Japan. Heero had suddenly developed a burning desire to understand his ancestry. That was fine with him. It gave them somewhere to go, away from the churning, blackened ocean their lives had become. Only now were the storms at last passing.   
  
"She's gone, you know. She gave her life force." Duo didn't ask who. Heero's voice broke softly. "I mean, I know she was just a produce of arcane manipulation, the likes of which are supposed to be completely impossible--but I was kind of attached to her."   
  
"Yeah." Holding out a hand, he pressed a handful of hard stones into Heero's scarred palm, fingers lingering on the rough skin a moment too long. "Found them in my pockets. Guess the gold got flash-fried, but diamonds... Hardest substance in the world."   
  
The diamonds from his Key. He didn't ask where Duo had really gotten them from, and found he didn't want to know. He held them out over the ocean, letting his fingers spread wide. They trickled into the water below, --plink-- falling, glittery and --plink-- vicious, into the --plink-- foam until only one remained.   
  
"Do you think it's really over?" Heero asked despairingly, as if even hope was too much to ask for.   
  
"For us, it is." With that, he closed his eyes tightly and let the salt spray wash over his face, pretending that their single moment was really eternity, that they wouldn't have to get off the ship and start living again.   
  
\--Plink--. 


	9. Epilogue Two: Return to Innocence

Gods.   
  
She was alive.   
  
Wufei sat on his bed, attempting to meditate, to center himself. Beside him, one arm curled around her chest, attempting to ward off attackers, even in her sleep. Still beautiful. Still untrusting.   
  
The clock ticked slowly, counterpoint to the sounds of his breath, rushing in and out of his mouth. "I had thought you were dead," he whispered softly, reaching out with one hand to brush the hand of his wife's cheek. "Now I find that you are alive, and everything changes."   
  
"You always said I was weak for not fighting. But I was fighting in my own way; you just couldn't see it, then." He had to go *now*, before he did something he would regret for the rest of his life. An emotional wave was cresting inside of him, crashing down upon the torn remnants of the person he thought he was. What was left was barren, smooth, untouched.   
  
"I'm sorry for not respecting you, though. I'm sorry for a lot of things--but men do not apologize in our society. We never have, we never will. The old ways of China are not for you, Meiran." One tanned hand reached out to brush over her red lips, over the slanted curves of her eyes.   
  
"You told me a long time ago to find peace."   
  
An image of the bluest waters of the Mediterranean stretched out in his mind's eye, taking a panoramic view of the shore. Perhaps he should take time out to see that before he left. There had not been much room for beauty in their lives, and what they could manage to snatch was forbidden.   
  
It was decided, then. He'd leave in the morning, departing for L-4 where Quatre had implored him to come visit him, and he'd leave her here, with the man who had saved her. Zechs, who truly deserved her. But for now, he would just lie down beside her, not touching but feeling her breath on his skin, stealing away that last night they should have had, which might have changed everything.   
  
Wufei reached out with one slender arm and turned the light off.


	10. Epilogue Three

It was a sign.   
  
When that firebird lit the sky, incinerating whole stars in its wake, I knew it was time. It was so terrible, it was a flame that grew and grew and showed no sign of stopping; it seemed the sun had risen in the middle of the night. Even Pierce, too stubborn to listen the first time that beautiful, horrible phoenix appeared, knew that what we had always feared had happened.   
  
Dominic...he was gone. Sarsis and Armand reported no sign of him anywhere. He'd had been Unmade, sent back to the void from which all life sprang. But our weapon, the one we had unwittingly created, had grown beyond us. Beyond anything we ever imagined; and what Pierce had foreseen had been unspeakable, leaving him shaking and whimpering for days after.   
  
Chaos, destruction and death were all the Earth had to look forward to, more senseless death than the second world war. With that knowledge we leave this world, sending ourselves back to the Unmade, back to the void. Maybe when we see Dominic there, he won't be too angry with us. 


	11. Epilogue 4: Rising

  
The Diamond Key It was a hot, sweaty night. He closed his eyes against the heat, tossed the damp sheet from across his hips. *God,* why had Duo turned the heat on? It was the middle of God forsaken summer, and the heat was on... Dimly, he reminded himself that the soft hum in the background meant the air conditioner was on, but that didn't make sense so he discarded the thought as one would a pair of socks with holes in the toes.   
  
He stumbled out of bed; Duo slept on, oblivious to his lover's frantic breathing and fingers that were curling into claws. "Aah, GOD!" he whimpered, gasping as a searing heat, worse than the time he'd started the grill and forgot to turn the gas down. Burned; it burned! Water, that was all his mind could come up with, a single focus to keep his thoughts from the pain that crackled low in his belly and was fast spreading throughout his body.   
  
His vision was rapidly blinking between the darkness of space and the room they shared. The ocean crashed outside, oblivious to his pain. If only he could have flown from their room, just broken through the glass and plunged deep into the sea, into the cold depths! He grunted again, his eyes watering. Steam, there was steam rising from somewhere...   
  
He made it to the bathroom, gripping the door handle with a strength that belied his mental weakness. He was screaming inside, but his lips were clenched tightly. He would *not* bother Duo with his insane imaginings! He was having hot flashes, that was it, though he didn't think that men had estrogen deficiency problems...   
  
"Water," he rasped again, his throat on fire, the bathroom flaring orange in his vision. "Water..." Heero choked as a ball of fire worked its way up from his stomach; what the...? Unable to help himself, knowing that it was insane, that people didn't vomit fire, he leaned over into the sink and heaved until he felt spent. Blue flames danced, oblivious to his denial, along the porcelain.   
  
One hand reached out and twisted the metal knob that started the cold water. It melted in his hands, but the water began to pour out. Not caring how strange it looked, he craned his neck until he could drink from the faucet, his body demanding water even as some part of him screamed, wanting to retreat from the onslaught of cold.   
  
Sobbing and shaking, he flicked on the light. The plastic melted onto his fingers, curling into a black flake. He looked in the mirror, managing to get a moment's glimpse before it shattered under the intense heat. The lightbulb also broke, glass raining down on his head.   
  
Tears...his tears evaporated as soon as they touched his skin.   
  
Gods...   
  
Heero collapsed against the tile, exhausted, hyperventilating, and fell into a dreamless sleep.   
  
==========================================   
  
"Mmmm...Heero, I'm feeling horny," Duo sighed, throwing an arm over his lover's...body... Cool sheets greeted wandering fingers. His violet eyes snapped open. "Heero?" No response. If he'd been making breakfast, he would surely have smelled it. No sign of Heero in their bedroom. Panic and fear began to rise in his stomach; not another go round, not another arcane and mystical experience. They'd suffered enough. It was someone else's turn.   
  
"HEERO!" he screamed, jumping out of bed and running around the two-story beach home they were renting. "HEER--" He stopped as he saw a handprint on the carpet. Kneeling beside it, he sniffed the smell of burnt synthetic... It was a burn! What the fuck?   
  
Then he looked towards the bathroom, and his heart skipped a beat.   
  
The doorknob had been neatly burned off. There was a handprint on the door, where someone had pushed it open. Gingerly, he rested his own hand against the burn mark. Heero's fingers were just shorter than his... It was a perfect match.   
  
"Shit! Heero, are you in here?" He went to flick on the light, but there was no light switch. His foot nudged against something soft and heavy. "Heero?"   
  
Two burning orange orbs greeted him. "Duo? Is that you?"   
  
The American fainted.

  
**The End**


End file.
